Snowbound
by Dani-Ellie03
Summary: Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw her parents and Killian doing the same thing she was, stepping up to the windows to stare out at the winter wonderland their quiet afternoon picnic had suddenly become.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Snowbound  
**Summary: **Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw her parents and Killian doing the same thing she was, stepping up to the windows to stare out at the winter wonderland their quiet afternoon picnic had suddenly become.  
**Spoilers:** Set post-3x22, "There's No Place Like Home."  
**Rating/Warning: **K+, for language, mostly. Charming Family & Captain Swan bonding, as per usual.  
**Disclaimer:** _Once Upon a Time_ and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing, and I'll put everything back the way I found it.  
**Author's Note:** I knew I couldn't stay away for too long! And yes, this is totally one of those "people are trapped somewhere and have no choice but to deal with each other" stories. However, I'm hoping you'll forgive me the contrivance because, well, Charming Family and Captain Swan. ;) I'm also probably the only person in the country who has yet to see _Frozen_. It's ubiquitous enough that I have a general idea but I have no clue about specifics. _And_ I dislike spoilers so I have no clue what _Once_ is going to do with it. All that is to say: I'm totally spitballing here, and I'm only using it for setup for this story anyway, so if it's completely off-base, please just go it with. :) Feedback makes my little day! Enjoy.

* * *

"Stop fidgeting," Snow White instructed her daughter, her irritation crystal clear in her tone.

Emma Swan wrinkled her nose as she shifted forward on the picnic blanket, stretched her legs out in front of her, and leaned back on her palms. "My legs were falling asleep. I haven't sat on my knees on the ground for a long period of time since I was Henry's age."

She wasn't entirely comfortable sitting the way she was, either, but it was better than before. That is, it was better than before until the pins and needles struck as the blood began flowing back into her legs. She squirmed against the sensation, resulting in another exasperated huff from behind her. "Honestly, Emma. Are you quite finished?"

"Yep."

"Finally."

The word was soft, so soft that Emma highly doubted Snow had meant to be heard. Emma smirked. It had been less than twelve hours since she had decided to let Snow in and be her mother in any kind of official capacity, and she already sounded like ... well, a mom.

The smirk fled from her face and confusion settled there instead when Snow heaved another sigh. Emma's hair fell loosely around her shoulders and a moment later, she felt Snow combing her fingers through it. "What are you doing?" she asked, raising a hand to touch the back of her head.

Snow lightly pushed her hand away. "Do you have the slightest inkling how difficult it is to do a proper braid when the person whose hair you're styling refuses to sit still?"

A flush of embarrassment colored Emma's cheeks. She actually didn't have the slightest inkling. It wasn't as if she'd had a lot of experience in this area. "Oh. Sorry."

This time Snow's sigh was less exasperated and more loving and indulgent. "It's fine. Just stop squirming, all right?" Emma nodded, causing Snow to sigh yet again. "Head still, Emma."

A chagrined Emma cringed and repeated, "Sorry."

Sitting on a picnic blanket in the middle of the woods while her mom braided her hair was something Emma never thought she would be able to experience. Not that the picnic had been her idea. Like most of the family activities she got roped into, this picnic was Henry's baby. "A way to celebrate the fact that we're staying here," he'd said, and honestly, how could she have said no to that?

She did, however, insist that Killian come, too. The suggestion had resulted in her father's raised eyebrows but he was apparently so happy that she'd finally come home that he'd agreed. Begrudgingly, of course, but he'd agreed.

Snow had agreed less begrudgingly, which was interesting, but Emma hadn't had the time to truly ponder that little development at all. Within minutes of the decision, a cooler, a picnic tote, and the diaper bag were packed and all six of them – Emma, Henry, Killian, her parents, and her baby brother – headed to the woods to find the perfect spot to relax and eat their picnic lunch.

After lunch, Neal had fallen asleep in David's arms, and Henry and Killian had decided to busy themselves with some sort of "buried treasure" game. It looked to Emma to be nothing more than Hot and Cold with a vague pirate theme, but since they were having fun, she didn't think it was worth teasing them about it.

Emma had remained on the blanket with her parents and sleeping baby brother, basking in the togetherness as she watched Henry and Killian work out the rules of their game. Then the wind had kicked up and had started annoyingly blowing her hair in her face. After she brushed her hair out of her eyes for the third time, Snow had hesitantly suggested that she braid it for her. "Just so it stops getting in your face," she'd added.

Emma's heart had leaped at the offer. She'd never really had anyone offer to play with her hair. It was something she'd always wanted, someone to run a brush through her hair and just spend the one-on-one time with her. Even though she was more than capable of throwing her hair back in a ponytail herself, she'd found herself nodding her permission.

It took her a minute to realize that it wasn't Emma the adult who'd agreed to let her mom play with her hair. It was Emma the lost little girl who'd agreed.

Emma the lost little girl who _finally_ mattered to someone.

Her mother's fingers combed through her hair deftly, returning Emma's attention to the present. She gathered the strands at the top of Emma's head and started making her way down, pulling in more strands as she went. Emma smiled; Snow was doing a French braid.

"Your hair is a dream to style, Emma," Snow murmured after a beat or two of silence.

Emma did not mistake the wistfulness in her tone. No doubt Snow was thinking of all those mornings she would have styled her daughter's hair were it not for the curse. Emma, too, was thinking of all those mornings she would have had instead. No brush being yanked through her hair a couple of times before she was shoved out the door to school, none of her own clumsy attempts at doing her own hair because her foster parents couldn't be bothered.

"Yeah, you'd think differently if it was the middle of the summer," Emma joked, mostly to get both their minds out of the past. "When the humidity's through the roof, my hair becomes a frizzy mess and even something as simple as a ponytail won't come out right."

"I hear that one," Snow replied, a knowing smile in her voice.

Emma smiled as well. Snow wore her hair so short that Emma oftentimes forgot that her hair would be just like her daughter's, only dark, if she grew it out.

For a while, things were quiet. Snow continued the braid and David repositioned Neal in his arms to better protect him from the rising wind. Henry and Killian continued their game of Pirate Hot and Cold, Henry's instructions of, "Port … now fore … no, sorry, aft, I meant aft" filling the small clearing.

A sudden gust of chilly wind swirled through the clearing, causing Emma to shudder. She unconsciously drew her jacket tighter around herself. "I thought it was just me," Snow said. "It's gotten awfully chilly since we've been out here."

It had, hadn't it? Emma glanced up at the sky. The sun had disappeared behind gray clouds that were rolling overhead. "The sky just needs to clear back up," she said, smiling when she felt Snow tie off the braid. She touched the back of her head, trying to get a mental picture of what her mother had done. As far as she could tell, she'd braided the top sections of her hair while leaving the underside down in kind of a French-braid half-ponytail. She wished she had a couple of mirrors so she could see it.

"I don't think that sky's clearing up," David murmured, a touch of concern in his voice.

No, now that Emma thought about it, maybe it wasn't. She blinked and sat up straight when she saw a couple of little white flakes lazily drifting to the ground. She had to have been seeing things, though. She knew this was Maine and winter was long in Maine, but snow was very much out of season for this point of the year.

When Henry stopped in his tracks and glanced up at the sky, she knew she wasn't seeing things. Even Killian stopped right where he stood, holding his hand out flat, palm facing upward. "Um, guys?" Henry asked. "Is it snowing?"

It was as if he'd uttered magic words. The skies opened up and thick white flakes fell fast and furious. Snow cried out in surprise as David and Emma jumped to their feet. Emma gathered the blanket and stuffed it back in the tote while Snow hastily repacked the cooler. David took off his jacket and swaddled Neal in it instead, extra protection against the sudden frigidness.

"We have to get to the car–" Emma started.

"No time," David interrupted as Henry and Killian joined the mad dash to gather their stuff from the clearing. Henry hooked the diaper bag over his shoulder while Killian took the cooler from Snow. "We need to get to shelter _now_."

Before Emma could even open her mouth to argue the point, her father was proven correct. The snow had grown so thick that they could barely see each other through the flakes. They suddenly found themselves in white-out conditions; driving back to the apartment or even out of the woods was no longer an option.

"Follow me," Snow said as she took off in a run. All four of them dashed after her, but not before Emma shrugged off her jacket and handed it David to help further protect her brother from the onslaught of white.

Snow somehow managed to find a hunting shack. Emma had no idea who it belonged to, but frankly, she didn't care. They needed shelter, and Random Hunting Shack was indeed shelter. Henry ran through the door first, breath heaving and teeth chattering. David followed with Neal, then Emma and Snow. Killian entered last, pulling the door closed behind him.

David handed Neal off to Snow so he could attempt to seal all the windows and doors against frigid drafts. Snow gratefully handed her daughter her jacket back, and a shivering Emma happily shrugged it on. "You all right, love?" Killian asked as he draped his own jacket around her shoulders to help warm her.

"Yeah, thanks, I'm fine," Emma replied. A little cold wouldn't kill her. She paced over to the front window while blowing into her cupped hands to warm them. Fresh snow had already filled in the frantic footprints they'd made in the snow on the front porch. "What the hell is happening?"

"No idea, but we all need to warm up," Snow said as she approached the fireplace while trying to calm a crying Neal, "and of course, there's wood here but no matches."

"That's not a problem," Emma said, crossing the cabin and crouching down in front of the fireplace. She shut her eyes and concentrated. Her magic burbled within her, warming her belly and rushing through her veins. When the internal magical temperature was just right, she flicked her wrist. The logs ignited, and a little bit of old-fashioned stoking was all that was needed to get the fire roaring.

Snow beamed, pride swimming in her eyes. "That was incredible, sweetheart."

Emma smiled almost shyly back at her. Before she could even find the correct words to acknowledge her mother's sentiment, her phone rang. David's rang a second later. The sheriff station's number popped up on Emma's caller ID, making her frown. Everyone who would be calling her from the sheriff's station was in the cabin with her. Stifling her confusion, she answered, "Hello?"

"Where the hell are you guys?!"

The panicked, somewhat angry voice belonged to Leroy. "Some random hunting shack in the woods. We were having a picnic and got caught in the storm," Emma told him. "Why the hell are you in the station? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine but there's already a foot of snow on the ground!"

"What?!" she exclaimed. Killian, Henry, and Snow all looked over at her, startled by the disbelief in her voice. She held her hand up to them and crossed back to the front window. Damn it, the Dwarf was not exaggerating! "What the hell–"

"Your guess is as good as mine, sister. People are panicking here. What do we do?"

That was a very good question. There wasn't a whole hell of a lot she and David could do for Storybrooke from a shack in the woods but the people in town needed to feel and stay safe. As she was trying to come up with something to tell Leroy, Emma heard another voice in the background, a female voice. The voice stopped just as David said something into his phone. Oh, whoa, wait a second. "Leroy, is someone with you?"

"Yeah, Red's here, too. We both came here looking for you."

All of a sudden, Emma knew exactly how to easily reach as many people in town as they could. "Put Ruby on the phone."

"She's talking to your father."

"I know she is. Put her on the phone anyway."

Leroy muttered something under his breath about her being touchy. Emma rolled her eyes. There was a muffled rustling on the line and soon, Ruby's voice filled her ear. "Emma?"

"Yeah," she said, meeting her father's confused gaze from across the room. She again held up her index finger, indicating that he would find out what the hell she was doing in a second. "Listen, you remember how to activate the phone tree, right?"

"That thing where everyone in town gets a phone call with a recorded message?"

"Yes." From the relief and pride on her father's face, Emma gathered he'd figured it out. "I need you to record a message telling everyone to get inside and stay where they are until the storm passes and then send that out on the phone tree."

"Got it," Ruby said, getting right down to business.

"Thanks, Ruby."

"No problem. Stay safe."

"You, too."

They both hung up, and David ended his call as well. "Quick thinking," David said, smiling at his daughter. She shrugged, downplaying the compliment, but she was smiling.

"Are you seeing this?" Henry breathed from the front window.

From her vantage point, all Emma could see out the window was white. She approached Henry and stood behind him to get a better look at what he was seeing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her parents and Killian doing the same, stepping up to the windows to stare out at the winter wonderland their quiet afternoon picnic had suddenly become.

A winter wonderland that Emma was pretty sure was scientifically impossible. This was not how snow worked. Even in the fiercest blizzards, snow only fell at the rate of a couple inches an hour. They'd had five times that in fifteen minutes!

For the first time, a tiny shiver of fear crept down her spine. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. "What the _hell_ is this?"

Her parents exchanged a troubled glance while Snow adjusted the blanket and jacket around Neal. Neither of them had an answer, at least not one they were willing to voice, which didn't exactly set Emma at ease.

Emma stepped away from the window and headed back toward the fireplace. Listening to the howling of the wind outside made her crave the heat even if she wasn't actually any colder than before.

Her family followed suit. "Mom?" Henry asked, a tiny bit of fear in his voice, too, as he plopped down in front of the fireplace. "This isn't normal, is it?"

"No, kid, this is most definitely not normal," Emma replied. "I didn't think this much snow in such a short amount of time was even possible."

"I don't think it is," David agreed, meeting his daughter's eyes meaningfully, "which leaves only one explanation."

Emma understood in less than a second. "It's magic," she breathed.

Storybrooke was, for whatever reason, under some sort of magical snow attack, something Emma didn't even know existed until right this very second. And she and her family, including her newborn baby brother, were trapped under at least a foot of snow in a hunting shack in the woods with no gloves, no hats, and no food beyond what still remained in their picnic cooler.

Great. Just great.

Killian sent her an apologetic smile. "Well, love, at least our lives won't ever be boring."

She sighed. Apparently they would not.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Y'all are the best. Thanks for the reviews and follows and favorites! Here's the next part. :)

* * *

"So what do we do now?"

Emma swallowed a whimper at her kid's question. For the time being, she supposed, there was nothing _to_ do. All six of them were stuck in this tiny hunting shack for who knew how long.

The only separate room was the bathroom; the rest of the shack had what a realtor would dub "an open floor plan." A double bed sat along the far wall and a sofa and a chair ran along on the other. Sleeping arrangements, then, were going to be less than ideal. At this point, Emma was just hoping it wouldn't come down to that.

A little part of her, though, was already worried that it would totally come down to that. Even if the storm let up enough for them to trudge to Snow's station wagon, how the hell were they going to get the car out of the woods through a foot of snow?

That, however, was not a worry she wanted to put on her kid. She sighed, turning away from the window and facing Henry. "I think we're stuck here for a bit, kid. At least until the snow lets up a bit."

Henry frowned as he gazed around at their cramped surroundings. _I feel you, kid_, Emma thought. No hunting shack was made to comfortably house four adults, one twelve-year-old, and one newborn baby. After a moment, though, he seemed to swallow his concerns because he set his shoulders and smiled at Emma. "So like I said, what do we do now?"

"We do exactly what we were going to do outside," David insisted, giving his family a gentle smile. "The only difference is we'll be doing it inside. No snowstorm is going to ruin our day. We're going to be here for the next little while, at least. We might as well try to make the most of it."

A nervous glance was exchanged around the room, and despite David's suggestion to get on with the day as if nothing had happened, no one moved. "He's right," Snow said after a moment. "We just need to pass the time until the storm lets up enough for us to go home."

Still, no one moved. Then Snow gently passed Neal to her husband, leaving her free to dig the picnic blanket back out of the tote. She spread it out on the floor in front of the fireplace and sat down, holding her hands out in front of the grate to warm them. A smiling David joined her, bouncing a fussy Neal in his arms to calm him. After a moment, Killian arched a questioning eyebrow at Henry, silently asking if he wanted to continue their game of Pirate Hot and Cold. Henry smiled and nodded, crossing the room to join Killian.

Emma cast another concerned glance out the window before hesitantly stepping away and joining her parents on the blanket. She wasn't at all sure that simply carrying on as if they weren't trapped in a hunting shack by a foot of snow was the best course of action. Not that there was anything any of them could really do about it, but still, part of her felt like they should be doing _something_.

Her concern must have shown on her face because Snow rested a gentle hand on her knee and murmured, "You're worried, aren't you?"

She cast a glance over at her shoulder at her kid and her pirate. Henry was searching for the object – Killian's thumb ring, she realized; it wasn't on his thumb anymore – and his attention was focused solely on his task. As Killian gave the boy sailor's instructions to help him find the ring, he met Emma's eyes and gave her a little smile. _It's all right_, that smile told her. _I'll keep him occupied so he doesn't worry_, that smile told her.

She gave him a grateful smile in return. Then she turned to her mother, lowering her voice so Henry wouldn't be able to overhear her. "Yeah. We have no clue what this is. We don't know if it's going to last twenty minutes or if it's going to last twelve hours. Is this the end of it, or is this only the beginning? Not to mention, in case you haven't noticed, none of us are exactly dressed for the dead of winter. We have enough food on us for maybe one more meal, and how many diapers do you have in that diaper bag?"

"You're right, Emma," David said gently. "We _don't_ know how long this is going to last. You're talking as if we're going to be our here for days, but what if it's only an hour or two? This could just be a delay–"

"–or it could be an attack," Emma interrupted. "I think we're all in agreement that this is not normal or natural. What if someone wants us all stuck in random places to make the pickings easier? What if someone wants to freeze us all out, cut our access to food and water? Because we can't be the only ones trapped in a place with little food or proper shelter. This thing came in too quickly. And what if we're stuck out here for days? We _need_ to have some kind of plan."

Snow and David exchanged an inscrutable glance, and Emma found herself getting vaguely annoyed at their silent communication. Was this how teachers felt when they caught students passing notes? Because she kind of wanted to tell her parents to share with the rest of the class.

After a moment, Snow returned her attention to Emma. "If we ration the food we have on us, we could get a couple meals out of it. I saw a pile of firewood along the side of the shack as we were coming in, so there's plenty of wood to keep the fire fueled for a good long while. Push comes to shove, we'll bring buckets of snow in to melt for drinking water, and push comes to shove, we can find food in the woods. It won't be gourmet, but it'll be sustenance."

"As for everything else, Emma, this could very well be an attack," David said softly, "but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it. We'll be on alert, of course, but there's nothing to guard against until it happens. At this point, our attention should be on staying warm and fed and keeping ourselves occupied until we can get out of here."

Okay, so with five seconds of silent communication, her parents had indeed come up with a plan. She supposed she should take back the bit about being annoyed with them for it. Hunting for food in the woods didn't sound at all appetizing but she'd deal if it came down to that. Maybe she could try magicking food into existence; that would save them hunting in the woods for food at all.

That said, she still didn't think she liked David's wait-and-see approach to a potential attack. "I don't know," she said after a moment. "I still feel like we should be _doing_ something."

"That's because you're worried," David replied, "and frankly, I am, too. The only thing is, we can't live our lives worrying about what's waiting around the corner. There's no life, in that case. There's just moving from crisis to crisis."

Emma swallowed hard, remembering a very similar conversation she'd had with him about finding the good moments between all the bad ones. Snow reached out and ran a gentle finger down her daughter's cheek. "This isn't exactly our first rodeo, Emma, ours or yours. We've survived the Enchanted Forest and Neverland and you and Hook survived _a trip through time_. If anyone can handle whatever's coming next, we can."

That finally made a smile tug at Emma's mouth. They were survivors, weren't they?

"You think you can relax a little now?" David gently asked her.

She nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

David smiled back. "That's my girl."

* * *

Heavy, blinding snow only fell for twenty more minutes. The storm was over completely ten minutes after that. As soon as Emma could see actual trees out the window and not just a curtain of white, she pushed herself to her feet to see what the damage was.

_Damage_ was apparently the appropriate term. From what she could see through the window, Emma would wager there was a good foot and a half of fresh snow on the ground. And from the looks of it, it was the heavy stuff, the stuff that downed power lines and tree limbs. The branches of the trees across from the window were sagging under the weight of it and when clumps of snow did fall from them, they landed on the snow-covered ground with a thump.

David, who'd handed Neal back to Snow so he could bring in some of the firewood like Snow had suggested, had to shove the door against the snow a few times to open it enough to squeeze through. He gulped worriedly, then swallowed the emotion and gave his family a comforting smile. "I'll be right back."

Emma watched him go until the door closed behind him, her hope dwindling as he trudged through the heavy snow.

The heaviness of the snow was the one thing in this whole mess that made any kind of sense. Generally, the warmer the weather, the heavier and wetter the snow. Since this storm had rolled in out of nowhere, the temperature hadn't dropped down enough for the light, powdery stuff.

She kind of wished it had. Though the lighter, powdery snow piled up faster, it was also a lot easier to deal with, from a cleanup standpoint. If there was really a foot and a half of dense, wet, heavy snow out there, going home in a couple of hours was no longer on the table. The trudge back to the station wagon would be a nightmare, and even then, Snow's car was not going to be able to drive over a foot and a half of snow. A couple inches, maybe, but not eighteen. No way in hell.

"We're not going anywhere for a long time, are we?" a young voice asked from behind her.

"No, kid, I don't think we are," she answered, turning away from the window with a sigh. Their only hope was that, if this was indeed a magic thing, the spell – or attack or whatever – was over and had taken the cold weather with it. That way the melting could start as soon as possible. "I think we're stuck here for the night, at least. Maybe we'll be able to get out of here in the morning. Did you get a hold of Regina?"

"Yeah. She's at home so she's safe, and she's glad I'm okay and with you guys."

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Killian's raised eyebrows and her parents' smiles of understanding. It wasn't that Regina was glad Henry was with four adults she could barely tolerate. It was that he was safe with them, and she knew it. Considering the alternatives, she was glad that when the storm hit, he'd been with four capable adults who would guard his life with theirs.

When Emma nodded, Henry smiled at her and headed to the picnic blanket. He and Killian had apparently tired of Pirate Hot and Cold because the two of them sat down, Henry right next to Snow and a squirming Neal so he could have a little baby time.

Killian crossed the room and stood next to Emma, giving her a gentle smile. "You doing all right, love?"

She shrugged. "Yeah. I'd be doing better if we weren't stuck out in the middle of the woods."

"Aye," he acknowledged.

A kick of the door startled them both. Suddenly on alert, Emma rushed to the window to find her father standing off to the side, arms laden with miraculously dry logs. She rolled her eyes as she pushed the door open. "Next time you want to use your words? You scared the shit out of me!"

"Sorry," he said, cringing, "but I have two pieces of good news."

Shivering against the cold, he stepped into the shack and set the firewood down by the door. Emma pulled the door closed. "What's your good news?"

"The first is that the firewood was covered in a tarp so the top half of the pile is perfectly dry." Snow smiled when she heard that. "The second is that it seems like it's warming up out there. The deep chill isn't in the air anymore, at any rate. If it continues to warm up, this stuff can start melting."

"Yes!" Henry cried.

Emma allowed a cautiously optimistic smile. Maybe they wouldn't be stuck out here long enough to have to worry about food after all.

David joined Snow and Henry in front of the fire to warm up, and after a moment, Killian sat down at the far end of the blanket, apparently not wanting to impose. Emma joined her pirate on the blanket, bridging the physical distance between him and her parents.

Now all they had to do was bridge the emotional one.

She was sure they would come around. As a matter of fact, David had already shown signs of coming around; she'd caught his little smiles when Killian did something nice for her or complimented her. Earlier, when he'd given her his leather jacket to help warm her up, she'd definitely spied a tiny smile on her father's face. Snow wasn't quite there yet, but David was definitely on his way.

Emma was actually beginning to wonder just how many of the overprotective-dad side-eyes he'd given Killian were real and how many were just David trying to put the fear of God in him as any good dad would.

"So," Henry said, bringing Emma out of her thoughts, "Killian and I were talking, and we thought of something fun we could do if we got stuck here for a while."

Snow and David turned surprised eyes on Henry. When Emma's kid and her pirate exchanged a mischievous glance, she groaned inwardly. Why did she get the feeling that they were all about to have some other sort of ridiculous activity foisted on them? "Oh, really?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at Killian. "You came up with something fun?"

"Don't sound so surprised, love," he teased. Then he leaned over to murmur into her ear, "I know of numerous ways to have fun."

Her cheeks flushed as she hid a smile. "Well, I am surprised," she said, handily avoiding his other comment because her parents were _right there_, for crying out loud. "What exactly did you have in mind? I'll tell you if it's fun or not."

He winked at Henry before turning a smug smile on Emma. "A treasure hunt."

Emma's inward groan became an outward one. She so did not have the patience for more Hot and Cold. "Look, I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but the game you guys were playing earlier wasn't a treasure hunt. It's called Hot and Cold, and it's pretty much a kids' game."

"No, Mom, we don't mean Hot and Cold," Henry said, interrupting her little rant. "We mean like a scavenger hunt. We could split into teams and one team hides a bunch of things and writes clues. The first clue will lead to a thing and another clue, which will then lead to another thing and _another_ clue and at the end, we'll end up with a bunch of things: a treasure!"

Already, Emma could see that her parents were completely on board with this little timewaster. They were practically grinning at each other, which, great. She was totally going to be roped into a freakin' scavenger hunt with her family, wasn't she? "This place is kind of small, kid. Even if we do this, I don't think we're going to be able to do it more than once."

"That's okay," Henry insisted. "Stuff like this is only fun once in a while anyway."

Emma swallowed a sigh. Her parents were looking at her expectantly while Henry was well on his way to the second stage of Puppy Dog Eyes. She looked almost pleadingly at Killian, figuring he'd be the one to let her off the hook – er, so to speak – and change everyone's mind about the scavenger hunt.

He simply arched an eyebrow at her.

A challenge. The damn pirate had issued her a _challenge_.

Well, then. "All right, we can have a scavenger hunt, but only if I get to be on the team that's hiding the things and writing up the clues." Mostly because she didn't think she had the patience to try to figure out clues written by someone else.

"That would be my team, love," Killian said, grinning.

Of course it was. She should have known. Well, at least they made quite the team.

She caught her parents exchanging another one of those looks, those knowing but concerned looks that indicated they were trying to figure out how they felt about their daughter and a pirate being an actual thing.

Which, were she and Killian an actual thing? She wasn't quite sure yet herself. "So," she said, as much to distract her parents as herself, "I guess it's me and Killian and the squirt against you guys and Henry."

All right, so Neal wasn't going to be a huge help to either team, but Emma wanted some baby time herself. Plus, she imagined it would be difficult to go on a scavenger hunt holding a baby.

Her parents shared a smile as David handed a wriggling Neal over to his big sister. "I guess so."

Emma smiled as well then raised her eyebrows at Killian. It was time for them to make the best scavenger hunting shack scavenger hunt known to man. "Let's go, pirate. I want to see your buried treasure skills in action."


	3. Chapter 3

Only after Emma settled down at the tiny dining table with Killian did she realize there was a slight problem with this little plan of theirs. "You know, squirt," she sighed, teasingly addressing the complaint to her baby brother for no real reason, "it's going to be kind of difficult to hide clues with our buried treasure when we don't have any paper to write them down on."

The stricken expression on Killian's face proved that he and Henry hadn't exactly thought about that. Emma bit her lower lip to hide an amused smile. "Or an implement with which to write them," he agreed. "The lad and I neglected to take that into consideration."

"Apparently," Emma smiled as she shifted a squirming Neal in her arms. "It's all right. We'll figure something out."

The pen was easy enough, she supposed. Snow always had at least one pen on her. Always. Any time Emma had asked her for one, she'd pulled one out of a purse or a tote or seemingly out of thin air. She'd even handed Emma a red pen on more than one occasion, much to her then-roommate's amusement.

Twenty-eight long years of being an elementary school teacher had ingrained the habit in her mother, Emma figured. Old habits die hard, so there was no doubt in Emma's mind that there was a pen somewhere in their belongings.

The paper, on the other hand ... that was a different story. A quick visual sweep of the shack revealed no old magazines lying around or pads of paper in plain view. Well, dammit.

"I'm sure there's some scrap paper somewhere in this shack," Killian said, startling her out of her thoughts.

He started to stand, apparently intent on finding said scrap paper. Emma shook her head at him, stilling him in his tracks. "No, wait. We're not going to go on a scavenger hunt just so we can have a scavenger hunt. Let me try something first."

Though a large part of her simply wanted to save everyone the time and Killian the aggravation of searching for something that may not even exist, part of her also wanted to see if what she wanted to do was even possible. It would solve a lot of potential problems if it was, not just the immediate one of needing a simple sheet of paper.

So far, all the magic she'd done while actually trying to do magic basically just used a framework that already existed. Yeah, she'd lit the candle in Neverland and the fire here but all she'd done was provide the flame. And yeah, she'd poofed small objects from here to there but she'd simply moved them from one spot to another. Even reopening the time portal; all she'd done then was reactivate it using a wand designed to reactivate previous magic.

And yeah, all those things were cool and everything but what she wanted to do was something else entirely, and she had no idea if it was within her capabilities.

Emma squared her shoulders, took a deep, cleansing breath, and shut her eyes while letting the breath out slowly. She concentrated, remembering Gold's and Regina's words when they were trying to teach her. Magic was accessed through emotion, through feeling, and her magic, her innate magic, was pure emotion. It was pure love, pure protection, pure comfort.

And she felt her magic building, starting with a faint tingling in her stomach, almost like butterflies. Butterflies mixed with the falling sensation of going over the first hill on a roller coaster; it was frightening at first but if she tamped down the fear, the magic would grow into a warmth that radiated throughout her entire being. She hated to describe the ensuing feeling as a rush but there was no better word for it. With the warmth came a rush of love and heat and protection, filling her, making her feel special and loved and like she could do absolutely anything she wanted.

And what she wanted right now was to create a sheet of paper. Just magically will one into existence, no hunting or searching required.

Emma hadn't noticed the way her entire body had relaxed against the warmth now coursing through her veins. She hadn't noticed that her head had dropped forward, her chin almost touching her chest. She hadn't noticed that her features had gone from scrunched in concentration to positively serene or that her breathing had evened out to a regular rhythm.

Only Killian had, and he only knew she hadn't simply fallen asleep for two reasons. One, she still had a tight grip on her baby brother, her index finger playing with his tiny ones, and two, a little smile had curled on her lips, a smile of which he highly doubted she was even aware.

In that moment, he knew she was ready. And in that moment, she knew she was, too.

Emma opened her eyes and sure enough, a blank sheet of crisp copy paper appeared on the table in a flash of white. A proud grin tugged at her lips as she met Killian's gaze. "Quite impressive, love," he said honestly before adopting to a teasing tone, "but how am I to write down these clues without a writing implement?"

Since she was already on a magical high, so to speak, she didn't even bother getting up to ask Snow for a pen. She simply flicked her wrist and a ballpoint pen appeared right next to the sheet of paper. "Ask and you shall receive."

"Bloody amazing," Killian murmured as he clicked the pen as if wanting to make sure it really worked. He looked up at Emma and grinned. "Now all we need are some hiding places."

They briefly took stock of the small space, searching for proper hiding places. Drawers or shelves or little alcoves. They decided on six spots, which meant they would need six different clues for six different objects. "We could use one thing from each of us," Killian said, making Emma smile.

Since Emma's hands were full of wriggling baby who had developed a fondness for waving his little hand back and forth through the ends of her hair, Killian took it upon himself to begin writing out the clues. Emma smiled down at her baby brother. "All right, squirt, I'll allow this for now but the second you learn to grab my hair and yank, we're done."

Killian chuckled at that as he wrote, his hand filling the top of the paper with old-fashioned spidery scrawl. Emma watched him with something resembling fascination. She'd never given any thought to what his handwriting would look like but she noted with surprise that it looked vaguely like her father's. David's letters had fewer flourishes to them, though.

_Enchanted Forest penmanship?_ she silently wondered. Snow's handwriting could be spidery like Killian's and David's when she thought about it but twenty-eight years of being Mary Margaret Blanchard and printing with this world's modern penmanship had taken a lot of the elegance out of it. Emma remembered from town paperwork that Regina's writing had a sort of old-fashioned fanciness to it, too, with extra loops on her letters and long lines crossing her Ts. Back before Emma knew the truth, she'd always thought the handwriting was just a sign of Regina being … well, _Regina_, but maybe the flourishes were simply a habit she'd been unable to break.

She was once again drawn from her thoughts by Killian's voice, though this time he clearly hadn't meant to be heard. "Writing goes so much faster without the need for an ink well," he murmured to himself as the pen flew across the page. Emma hid a smile.

The two of them came up with the next five clues together. When they were finished, Emma noted with amazement that he'd split the sheet into six equal sections completely by eye. "Damn," she muttered.

"What is it, love?"

She nodded her head towards the paper. "I can't do that. I'm pretty sure 'measure twice, cut once' is a saying because of me."

He smiled at her. "Navigational skills have other applications, it seems."

"Apparently." She shifted Neal in her arms to free a hand and slid the sheet of paper in front of her. The only things left to do were separate the clues and gather the "treasure."

Her plan had been to fold the sheet around the clues and then tear it at the score lines but her squirming baby brother in her arms kind of prevented that. She was just about to hand Neal over to Killian when she thought of something else instead. Emma shut her eyes and envisioned the single sheet as six separate ones, all perfectly trimmed around Killian's spidery words.

When she opened her eyes, she found six rectangular scraps of paper staring up at her. A proud grin tugged at her lips as she met Killian's eyes. He was smiling proudly at her as well. "Do you think you could conjure another sheet of paper, love?"

Since she'd already done so once, magicking him some more paper was a piece of cake. She flicked her wrist and a second sheet of crisp white paper appeared on the table. "Why?"

"You'll see." He pulled his thumb ring off and handed it to her. "Hide the objects; I'll be done by the time you return."

Well, he was certainly being mysterious. She narrowed her eyes at him, which only made him arch an eyebrow at her in return. Sighing, she pushed herself to her feet and crossed over to her parents and Henry, who were still seated by the fire. "I need something from each of you to hide."

Without a single question, her family handed over their little objects. Snow gave up the pearl earrings she was wearing and also handed Emma one of Neal's rattles. Henry handed over his phone and David gave her his house keys. Emma had Snow help her take off her own necklace and then said, "Now close your eyes. And Henry, if you peek, so help me ..."

Henry chuckled. "I won't. Cross my heart!"

"Uh huh," Emma said, her tone teasingly incredulous. In their shared fake memories of his childhood, Henry had always peeked during any kind of hiding game. He traced an X over his chest for good measure, making Emma snicker. "All right, fine, I believe you."

Once everyone had closed their eyes, Emma placed each object in a spot she and Killian had discussed along with the handwritten clue that would lead the family to the next object's location. Killian sat at the table, simultaneously watching her and scribbling away on the new sheet of paper. Okay, seriously, what the hell was her pirate up to?

Only after she circled back to the table on her way to hide Henry's phone did she see what Killian was doing. He'd drawn a crude version of the inside of the shack and marked each hiding place with a little X. Her pirate had drawn her a quick and dirty treasure map! "So we don't forget where they are," he explained through a joking smile.

"Oh, is that why pirates draw maps?" she asked teasingly.

"Aye," he replied, though she could tell that he was only half-joking. "You've no idea how much forgotten treasure exists because the pirate couldn't remember where he'd buried it. When one does a great many things under the influence of rum, it helps to leave oneself reminders."

Emma smirked. "And how much buried treasure have you forgotten about, captain?"

"That's an impossible question to answer, love."

She raised her eyebrows. "That much?"

"No, that's not what I meant. If I've forgotten about it, how can I know that I've forgotten about it?"

She came thisclose to sticking her tongue out at him.

His eyes, which had been sparkling with teasing mischief, softened as a smile pulled at his lips. "Not that it matters. All the treasure I need is in this room."

Emma's breath caught in her throat. Did he mean her? He did, didn't he? He totally meant her. She'd never been someone's _treasure_ before.

She had to blink rapidly to break the moment. She couldn't afford to get lost in those honest, blue eyes and in his words with her parents and kid waiting for them to tell them it was time to start the treasure hunt. She glanced at the fireplace, at her parents and kid having a soft conversation with their eyes closed. Then she looked down at her squirming baby brother and up at her pirate.

And then it hit her. All the treasure she needed was right here in the room with her, too.

Killian's face had fallen slightly, as if he was afraid he'd pushed too hard. And maybe yesterday – or, not _yesterday_, exactly, because they'd spent a couple days in the past … but before their adventure through time, at any rate – that comment would have sent her running, but now … now she could see the honesty and truth in his words. Now she could hear them and let herself feel them without needing to flee from them.

She smiled to set him at ease and said, "Me, too."

He smiled back, simultaneously relieved and touched. He stood and pressed a kiss to her temple before reminding her that she still Henry's phone to hide.

She swiftly did so and then addressed her family. "Okay, you can open your eyes now."

"Finally!" Henry exclaimed, pushing himself to his feet. "Let the treasure hunt begin!"

Killian handed over the first clue and off they went. David, however, hung back. His eyes were darting from Emma to Killian and back again. Emma gulped, wondering for a brief moment if he'd heard their conversation. And then David met her eyes and smiled at her.

What did that mean? Had he heard it? Was he okay with it? Or had he not heard it at all?

David stepped up to her then, causing Killian to excuse himself to "help" Snow and Henry with the search so father and daughter could have a quiet moment together. David's hand instantly found Neal's little one but his proud eyes were focused solely on his baby girl. "Uh, hi?" Emma said uncertainly.

"You're finding your moments, Emma," David said by way of a greeting, "and I couldn't be more proud of you. Don't get me wrong, you're still my little girl and if he hurts you, he'll wish he never left Neverland, but …" He let the sentence trail off, smiling at her instead.

Emma gaped him. What the hell was going on here? Four hours ago, David had been giving Killian the evil eye and now he was all "you're finding your moments" about him? "I don't understand," she said in what must have been the understatement of the century.

He chuckled. "I don't imagine you do, and it's not my place to explain. Suffice it to say I just remembered a conversation I once had around a fire with another prince. The conversation opened my eyes quite a bit back then, and the memory of it has done so again."

"You do know you're making like, zero sense, right?"

"I'm sure I am." He smiled lovingly at her. "Just keep finding your moments, Emma, no matter where and with whom. These moments, these quiet moments just being together and being happy… they're what life's all about."

Though Emma was utterly confused, she found herself nodding, agreeing to take her father's advice. After quickly caressing her cheek with the side of his thumb, David pressed a kiss to the side of her head and then excused himself, joining Snow and Henry on the scavenger hunt and leaving his daughter staring after him.

Killian walked back up to Emma, who still hadn't the faintest idea what had just happened. "What was all that about?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Emma said as she shifted Neal in her arms. They were quiet for a beat as they watched Henry puzzle out the second clue, then Emma asked, "Are all families as weird as mine?"

Killian chuckled. "I don't think any family is as odd as yours, love, but I'll bet there are some that come close."


	4. Chapter 4

Pirate, princess, and newborn prince had plopped themselves down on the couch to watch while Snow, David, and Henry searched for buried treasure. Well, newborn prince hadn't exactly had an option, considering he was still cradled in his sister's arms. The treasure hunters done well so far but the final clue seemed to have stumped them.

Emma held back a snicker at the realization that her kid was even starting to get a little anxious, most probably because the only thing standing between him and finding his phone was that clue. This last hiding place was the one Emma was the most proud of because the amount of stealth it had taken to hide it had been off the freakin' charts.

"'You'll find me near the place everyone gathers,'" Henry read again, squinting at Killian's old-fashioned scrawl. "'I've made my new home under the item that made the gathering possible.'" He looked up at his grandparents and frowned. "But we all gather in the kitchen, and there is no real kitchen here."

Killian arched an amused eyebrow at Emma. She shrugged in return, just as amused. The kid spoke the truth; activities in their household did have a tendency to center around the kitchen.

Snow and David peeked over Henry's shoulders at the clue, reading it over again. Suddenly Snow's eyes lit up. "It's not referencing where we gather at home. It's talking about where we gathered here."

"The fireplace," David breathed.

Henry's eyes widened in panic, making Emma choke back another snicker. "Relax, kid," she said, her thumb absentmindedly running along her brother's tiny fingers. "I didn't put your phone _in_ the fireplace or anything."

"Oh, thank God!" Henry cried, making everyone chuckle. He turned to look at the fireplace, his thoughtful frown deepening. "What could it be _under_, though?"

An ornate fireplace, this was not. The utilitarian stone hearth ran from the ceiling to the floor and left no ledge for sitting or gathering. A rack of fireplace tools sat off to the right side and a log cradle sat to the left. Basically, there wasn't very much at the fireplace under which to hide anything, even something as small as a phone.

After a beat, David grinned. A moment later, Snow did as well. They turned to Emma, touched smiles on their faces. Oh yeah, they'd totally figured it out. She smiled back at them.

It took less than thirty seconds for the same knowing grin to hit Henry's face. "I've got it!" He whipped the picnic blanket out of place and sure enough, his phone sat on the floor, right where the far corner of the blanket had been. Emma had made sure to tuck it out of the way so it wouldn't get stepped on when everyone got up to start the treasure hunt.

"That was a good one, Mom," Henry said as he picked up his phone and tucked it in the little bucket they'd been using to collect the treasure. "You guys hid it right under our noses!"

"We never even heard you," Snow agreed. "Were you still holding Neal?"

"Yep," Emma smirked.

"How did you keep the little guy quiet?" David asked her, amazed.

"That would be telling, wouldn't it, squirt?" she replied, addressing her brother with a teasing smile. In truth, all she'd done was brush her index finger along his little cheek. Her brother seemed to like the little touches, and truthfully, she liked giving them to him. She'd had so few comforting touches when she was growing up; she wanted to make damn sure her brother had them. And oddly enough, she found that giving him the ones she should have received as a kid eased that deep ache in her heart in a way that nothing else ever had.

David smirked at her. "He's not even a month old yet and the two of you already have your own secrets?"

"Damn straight. Just wait until he starts to talk. We could very well have our own language by then."

Her family exchanged touched grins. The words had slipped from her mouth before she could even think about them but hearing them aloud made her heart catch in her chest. She had a baby _brother_, a little sibling she could share things with and teach things. She was a _big sister_. After living so much of her life alone, all the little things that went along with being a member of a real family had a tendency to take her by surprise.

She felt her throat constricting in just the right way to let her know that tears were imminent. Her muscles must have tensed slightly because Killian reached behind her and, out of view of her parents and kid, ran his hand up and down her back. Then his hand was gone, as quickly as it had come.

The swift and silent reassurance was just so … him. And it was so perfect for her. No lingering over the moment, just a touch to bring her comfort. Just a touch to let her know that he was there.

"Snow," David breathed, his soft voice drawing Emma out of her reverie. When she refocused on the present, she found her father slipping the little treasure collection bucket from Henry's hand. He knelt down and gingerly dumped the contents of the bucket on the floor. "Look at this."

"What?" Henry asked after a beat of silence. "It's just our stuff."

"No, it's not just our stuff," Snow said, looking up at her daughter and Killian with touched eyes. "It's a 'treasure' made from one thing from each of us. It's a treasure made from _us_."

"It was Killian's idea," Emma said softly, smiling over at her pirate. She felt him tense beside her, and it was her turn to give him a gentle touch of comfort.

Snow turned a surprised look on Killian. "Thank you," she said, giving him a smile. "That was a very lovely gesture."

"You're welcome, milady," Killian replied.

It took less than a second for the tender moment to be completely ruined. Neal began to fuss in Emma's arms and before she even had a chance to shift him to find out what was wrong, he spit up. She jumped to her feet, startled. "Oh, squirt, really?" she cried.

Vaguely disgusted expressions lit Henry's and Killian's faces while Snow and Charming swallowed chuckles. "Come on," Snow said, hiding a smile as she placed her hand on the small of Emma's back. "Let's get you both cleaned up."

Emma sighed. "We had a good thing going, too."

Snow smiled as she very carefully took her son from her daughter's arms. "Not to worry. We've got a change of clothes in the diaper bag for him, and I'll help you get the baby vomit out of your shirt."

A glance down did indeed reveal a trail of baby puke down the front of Emma's shirt. Aw, _crap_. She'd thought he'd kept his puke contained to himself. "Ugh."

A chuckle finally escaped Snow's lips that time as she crouched down and picked up the diaper bag. Mother and daughter crossed the cabin, and Snow set both the diaper bag and Neal down on the double bed. As Snow dug in the diaper bag for a change of clothes for Neal, Emma glanced down at her own shirt.

She didn't have the luxury of having a change of clothes with her. Even if she and Snow could get the baby puke out of her shirt, what was she going to wear in the meantime? And then it hit her. She'd poofed paper and a pen into existence earlier. Maybe she could magic herself a new shirt.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing her magic. A new shirt was a bit bigger than a couple sheets of paper and a pen, literally and figuratively, but if she tried …

The magic grew, starting as a rumbling in her stomach and warming her from the inside out. She envisioned her new top, a dark green fuzzy sweater that would help keep her warm over the next few hours. Her head dropped forward as she gave herself over to the building magic.

A soft gasp beside her forced her to open her eyes. There on the bed beside the diaper bag lay a dark green fuzzy sweater. Snow looked at her with wide eyes. "Did you just ..."

"Yep," Emma said with a somewhat proud grin. She grabbed the sweater and swiftly changed, shrugged out of the puked-on shirt while pulling the sweater down over her head. She'd picked up that trick changing for junior high gym class. "That's the fourth thing I've poofed into existence today. Maybe we won't have to worry about food or water now, not if I can just think of something and have it appear out of thin air."

Snow smiled back at her. "No, perhaps not, but listen to me, all right? I don't want you overdoing it. Your magic is an option if we need it, but–"

A loud crash interrupted Snow's no doubt impassioned plea for magical caution. Everyone jumped, Henry slapped his hands over his hears, and poor Neal started wailing. "What the hell was that?" Emma cried, her heart pounding.

David and Killian were already on their feet. "It sounded like glass breaking," David said.

Emma glanced around the shack. No broken windows that she could see, so again, what the hell? A moment later, she felt cold air swirling at her feet, leaking into the room from underneath the closed door of the shack's bathroom. _Oh shit_, she thought, dashing over and whipping open the bathroom door.

Sure enough, a large evergreen branch was hanging half-in and half-out of the bathroom window. Shattered glass was everywhere. Frigid air rushed into the shack through the broken glass, and yet the only thing Emma could think was, _I thought David said it was getting warmer out_. Because judging by the cold air the broken window was letting in, it certainly didn't feel like it had gotten warmer.

"Snow, will you take Henry and Neal to the couch, please?" David said, his first and foremost priority being getting the kids as far from the frigid air as possible. "We'll handle this."

Emma glanced over her shoulder as her mother did as David asked, trying to shush Neal while ushering Henry out of view. "How did this happen?" Killian asked, so softly that Emma wasn't sure he'd meant to be heard.

David carefully approached the window and peeked around the branch. "The wind's positively whipping out there. Apparently it thought we needed to do some redecorating."

"Fantastic," Emma muttered. "Like we needed this right now." They were already snowed in, stuck in a tiny hunting shack in the middle of the woods, no winter clothes, no food, no water, and now the outside was trying to force its way in.

"Yes, well, it would have been nice if the wind had decided to redecorate on a warmer day," Killian said, making both David and Emma smirk.

All three of them stared at the window, trying to come up with a game plan. They needed to think of something fast because Emma was already starting to shiver. The fire was not going to be able to keep up with this for long; if they couldn't find a way to patch the window …

Emma reached behind her and pulled the door closed. The least they could do was contain the cold as best they could. Of course that also meant filling the tiny bathroom with frigid air. Within seconds, her teeth were chattering.

Killian, who'd cocked his head to the side as he took stock of the situation, said, "We should pull the branch out of the window from the outside. There's more of it out than in, so it would be easier than trying to pull it towards us."

"I agree," David said. "Then we'll have to clean up the glass in here and–"

"The branch isn't exactly the real problem," Emma interrupted. "How are we going to patch the window?"

Neither Killian nor David said anything, which didn't exactly fill her with hope. A quick glance around the bathroom revealed no materials they could use to patch the window, and Emma knew there was nothing in the shack they could use, either.

She couldn't let David and Killian go outside to try to remove the branch, not with a steadily dropping temperature inside. They wouldn't be able to get warm enough once they got back in! She wracked her brain, trying to think of _something_. She glanced down at her magically conjured sweater, and the answer came to her. "I think I might be able to do something, if you'll let me try it," she said. When they both looked hesitant, she rolled her eyes. "Unless either of you have a better plan right now."

Another glanced passed between the men before David sighed. "Go ahead."

Emma smiled gratefully him before shutting her eyes and concentrated. The flitting sensation in her stomach from the awakening magic was beginning to feel familiar. Tendrils of it raced throughout her entire body, warming her.

Her teeth stopped chattering.

Her first order of business was to get the damn branch out of the window. Without opening her eyes, she envisioned the snow-covered evergreen being pulled back outside as if by an invisible hand. A moment later, she heard her father gasp.

"It's out, love," Killian murmured into her ear.

A tiny half-smile turned up the corners of her mouth but she didn't allow either his voice or her success to distract her from step two. She continued to concentrate, and the warmth spread to her fingers and toes. Now she had stopped shivering altogether, the heat of her magic holding the frigid air at bay.

Emma willed every single little shard and sliver of glass into the bathroom wastebasket. She wanted it to be completely safe, no piece left behind. There was a soft, tinkling thud and David murmured, "Amazing."

Two down, one to go.

Though she was losing energy, she pushed on, imagining the shattered window as whole again, double-paned and strong enough to keep out the cold. This time, though, was different.

Her breath was coming out in ragged pants but she tried to concentrate, tried to focus on the task at hand. She thought she heard voices but they sounded far away. She thought the voices might be calling her name but she was too focused on her task to pay them any attention. Didn't they understand that she _had_ to fix the window?

"Emma!"

The urgent hiss in her ear and a rough shake of her shoulder shattered her concentration, forcing her eyes open. Her magic, which had been at release point, sent a plastic cup that had been left on the sink who knew how long ago flying across the room. "What the hell?" she cried, whirling on her father. "I almost had it!"

"No, Swan, you didn't," Killian said softly. "We don't know what you were trying to do but you'd gone completely ashen and your whole body was trembling."

Just as she opened her mouth to argue the point, a wave of dizziness washed over her. Thank God David grabbed her arms and held her steady, otherwise she would have been on the floor. "Are you all right?" he asked when he felt her stand under her own power.

"Yeah," she answered shakily. "Yeah, I'm okay." All of a sudden, she wanted nothing more than to sit down.

Emma started to go down again, a little more controlled this time, but David and Killian held her up. She wanted to yell at them that she'd been trying to sit on purpose but couldn't seem to force out the words. "We need to get her out of here," Killian murmured to David.

The next thing she knew, they were walking her out of the bathroom and sitting her down on the edge of the bed. When she heard a panicked Snow tell Henry to hold Neal and stay on the couch, she groaned aloud. "All I was trying to do was fix it," she mumbled.

"Fix what, kiddo, the window?"

Emma nodded in response to her father's question, which kind of made her head spin.

"Oh, sweetheart," Snow murmured as she sat down next to her daughter, panicked hands fluttering and pushing locks of hair behind Emma's ears. "This is what I was trying to tell you before the window broke. You can do some amazing things, Emma, but you can't do everything. We don't expect you to have all the answers, and we don't expect you to save all of us with your magic."

"But the window … we have no way to fix it ..."

"Hook and I can check outside for a sheet of plywood or something to use as a patch," David assured her. "In the meantime, we'll close the bathroom door and put something against the bottom to keep the draft contained."

"I can make a sheet of plywood," Emma started to say.

"No," Snow insisted. "You're not using your magic, not until you get your energy reserve built back up again."

A sheepish Emma looked up at her pirate and her father and then over at her mother. "You guys are about to get annoyingly overprotective, aren't you?"

Her parents and Killian shared a relieved smile at the fact that she felt well enough to joke with them. "Oh, honey, you haven't even seen overprotective yet," Snow teased, lightly nudging Emma's shoulders with hers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** As you can probably tell by the length, this one? Was fun. :)

* * *

Snow was right: Emma had yet to become acquainted with her mother's overprotective streak.

And Emma had thought those first few hours together in the Enchanted Forest were annoying! They were a freakin' breeze compared to the aftermath of her bout of dizziness in the bathroom. After letting Emma sit for a moment to get her bearings, Snow clutched her daughter's hands. "Are you all right to stand?"

"I'm fine," Emma said, trying to pull her hands free. Despite all outward appearances, she did not need her mom holding her hands. Snow ignored her efforts, holding firm until she was sure that her baby girl wasn't going to topple over if she let go.

"Over to the couch with you," Snow instructed, wrapping her arm around Emma's shoulders and gently nudging her forward.

"This is a little ridiculous, you know. I don't need you to walk me over to–"

"Hush. You're lucky I'm not still holding your hands."

Emma heard quiet snickering coming from behind them. She glanced over her shoulder and sure enough, both Killian and David were getting an absolute kick out of this. David at least had the decency to attempt to hide the smirk on his face when he caught his daughter's eye. Killian not only didn't bother stifling his amusement, he actually grinned and then winked at her.

Damn pirate.

Snow got Emma set up on the couch before picking up the picnic blanket, which still lay in a rumpled heap on the floor. She shook it out before spreading it over Emma's legs. Thankfully, she left it to Emma to adjust it as she saw fit. Being tucked in in front of everyone would have probably made her melt into the sofa in embarrassment. "You, my darling daughter, are going to rest," Snow instructed. Emma opened her mouth to argue but Snow cut her off. "I don't want you moving a single muscle."

Emma blinked. Snow's voice, though still gentle and loving, had a stern edge to it that brooked no dissent. Henry, still seated at the other end of the sofa, raised his eyebrows at Emma while hiding an amused smile.

Well, then. If she couldn't argue, she could at least play a little bit. She gave Henry a wink before turning to her mother. "What if I get itchy?" she asked, a wry grin pulling at her lips.

Three little coughs filled the shack as David, Killian, and Henry all tried to swallow chuckles. Snow looked like she was trying her level best to hide a smirk as well, which made Emma smile in triumph. "You'll just have to deal with it in that case," she replied, her tone softer now. "No moving, Emma."

Heaving a mock put-upon sigh, Emma nodded in deference to her mother's wishes. Truth be told, she didn't have the energy for any kind of activity – although telling her she couldn't even scratch an itch was taking things a bit too far. (Not that she thought Snow was being serious about that, but still.)

Satisfied that Emma wasn't going to go anywhere, Snow smiled at her, lifted a sleeping Neal out of Henry's arms, and crossed back over to Killian and David. Emma only heard the briefest bit of discussion regarding what their next move should be before Henry softly asked, "Are you really okay, Mom?"

The poor kid looked _so_ worried, and it struck her now how terrifying it must have been for both him and Snow to see David and Killian dragging her out of the bathroom. _Aw, crap_, she thought, cringing inwardly. Out loud, she said, "I'm fine, kid. They're all completely overreacting."

"You almost passed out, Emma!" David cried from across the room.

"Twice," Killian added.

"Okay, one, I did not almost pass out," she said, addressing her father's point first. "I got lightheaded. There's a difference. And two, I was actually trying to sit down on purpose the second time."

"That may very well be, but you tried to sit down in the middle of the bathroom floor," David gently argued. "Which, correct me if I'm wrong, is still an indication that you should take it easy for the next little while."

Killian and Snow were both nodding in agreement to David's point. It was quite clearly three against one; arguing was going to get Emma exactly nowhere. Sighing, she turned to Henry. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?"

Henry shook his head at her, eyes sparkling in amusement. "I don't think so, Mom."

"Damn."

Everyone got a good chuckle out of that, too.

After sending Emma another loving smile, Snow turned to David and Killian and the three of them got to work. They pulled the bathroom door closed and tucked Snow's jacket along the bottom of it to keep the draft from escaping through the small gap between the bottom edge of the door and the floorboards. With the draft contained for now, David and Killian bundled up as much as they could and headed outside to look for something they could use to patch the window. On his way out the door, Killian grabbed the bucket they'd used during the scavenger hunt.

"What's with the bucket?" Emma asked her mother as she approached the sofa to check on her grown-up baby.

"You may have changed but I still have to get the baby vomit out of your top." Oh, yeah. In all the chaos, Emma had forgotten that Neal's spit-up had made a mess of her shirt. "There's no running water and I'd rather not use our drinking water for cleaning. Hook's going to collect some snow and we'll let it melt."

That made sense, Emma supposed.

"Now it's my turn to ask the questions. How are you feeling?" Snow shifted Neal in her arms and, to her daughter's horror, placed her palm against Emma's forehead to feel for a fever.

Henry snickered as Emma scrunched her nose and ducked out of Snow's reach. "I'm _fine_. I don't have a fever. I'm not sick!"

"No, you're just exhausted and pale and unsteady on your feet. Honestly, Emma." She clucked her tongue in disapproval as she looked her daughter over. "I think you should eat something. Protein will help."

The very thought of food made Emma's stomach do a somersault. She almost groaned aloud but caught herself just in time. Suffice it to say, no, she did not think she should eat something. Telling Snow as much would only send her into Protective Mom Overdrive, though, so Emma just gave a little shrug and said, "I'm not hungry."

If Henry weren't sitting right there, she would have also mentioned that they were supposed to be conserving their food.

Snow narrowed her eyes and for a brief moment, Emma felt like a little kid who was about to be sent to her room. Then Snow's gaze softened, filling with sympathy as comprehended what was behind Emma's sudden and conspicuous lack of appetite. "Oh, honey," she murmured.

Yep, just as Emma thought: her mom's protective nature had indeed shifted into overdrive. Things were about to get super-annoying, weren't they?

As if sensing his mom's discomfort, Henry slipped his hand into hers. She shifted closer to him, which, damn it all, allowed Snow the opportunity to squeeze in on her other side.

_Seriously?_ Emma thought. Now sandwiched in between her kid and her mom and baby brother, she squirmed in an effort to regain even a smidgeon of personal space.

"You're moving," Snow said teasingly, making Henry clap a hand over his mouth to muffle an amused snort. Emma rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips despite herself. Snow smiled back and brushed the pad of her thumb down Emma's cheek. "Let's just rest for a little bit, all right?"

That actually sounded like a _wonderful_ idea. When Emma gratefully nodded her agreement, Henry smiled and cuddled up to her side. In their shared fake memories, many a sick day had been spent snuggled up on the couch together. She'd allowed Henry snuggle up with her to help him feel better, giving no care or concern as to whether she would come down with the same thing. And whenever she was sick, he'd cuddled up to her despite her protests that she'd get him sick, too. "You do it for me," he'd always said. "I want to do it for you."

It pained her to realize that no matter how deep those memories ran, they hadn't really experienced any of it. Had Regina simply imparted memories of Henry cuddling up with her when he was sick on Emma or had the entire thing been figments of their imagination?

Maybe … or maybe not. Something else flitted through her head then, a day the previous summer when she and Henry had gone for a picnic in Central Park and Emma had come down with food poisoning. They'd narrowed the culprit down to the macaroni salad, which must have been left out in the sun too long. It was the only thing Emma had eaten that Henry hadn't. Henry had cuddled up with her on the sofa then, too, whenever she wasn't running to the bathroom to expel the spoiled mayonnaise from her stomach, of course.

Central Park during the previous summer meant that it was a _real_ memory. A real memory clearly informed by their false ones, of course, but it had indeed really happened. Smiling, Emma reached an arm around Henry's shoulders and pulled him closer. He happily accepted, relaxing against her.

The explosion of love that filled her heart when her kid snuggled against her side made her breath catch, and she was suddenly keenly aware that her own mom was sitting right at her other side.

Maybe it was time for her to take another leap of faith.

After taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she slouched against Snow, assuming the same position as Henry. A soft gasp of surprise escaped Snow's lips but she reacted in less than a second, wrapping her arm around Emma's shoulders the same way Emma had hers wrapped around Henry.

Emma turned her head, somewhat confused as to how Snow was managing to hold both her and her baby brother. Neal was still sleeping comfortably cradled in Snow's right arm, and Snow was beaming at Emma as if she'd been waiting for this moment for her entire life.

Truthfully, she probably had been.

"It's all right," she murmured gently. "I've got you both."

A lump formed in Emma's throat, a lump she tried to no avail to swallow. Since she was afraid that opening her mouth would lead to tears she had no desire to shed, Emma settled for giving her mom a smile. Then she relaxed fully, resting her head on Snow's shoulder and closing her eyes.

And if hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes when she felt Snow press a light kiss to the top of her head, well, no one needed to know about them.

For a long moment, the four of them just sat cuddled on the couch together. The wind had picked back up, Emma realized. It was howling again, making Emma shudder even under the blanket. Were David and Killian okay out there?

When Henry shivered, too, Emma opened her eyes in sudden concern. Before she could even formulate her concern into words, the door to the shack opened and David and Killian came rushing back inside, shivering and eager to warm themselves by the fire.

It took less than a second for both Emma and Snow to notice that the guys were empty-handed, save for the bucket of packed snow hanging from Killian's hook. David closed the door, blowing into his hands in a meager attempt to warm them, and gave a slight shake of his head when he caught Snow's eye.

Emma sat up straight, her heart sinking into her stomach. They hadn't been able to find anything that could conceivably be used as a patch for the bathroom window. _Damn_ it.

Was it her imagination or was it colder in the shack now than it was before the window had broken? She was shivering, but then again, she'd been in the bathroom. Wait a second, though … Henry was shivering, too.

She threw the blanket off her legs in an effort to properly judge the air temperature. No, it was definitely colder. There was a chill in the air now. Not a deep, middle-of-winter chill, but a the-heat's-been-on-low-all-day-while-no-one-was-home chill. It wasn't dangerous yet but it had the potential to become dangerous if they couldn't get a handle on it.

Snow must have felt the chill in the air, too, because she stood, gently handed Neal off to Henry, and fed more logs into the fire.

The fire wasn't going to be able to keep up with this for very long, not with frigid air rushing in through that broken window. They'd contained the draft as much as they could, but it wasn't enough. Emma gave Henry a smile, hoping to keep him calm, before standing and joining her mother, father, and Killian at the fireplace. "You've got to let me try again," she murmured, keeping her voice soft so Henry couldn't overhear her.

"That is absolutely out of the question," Snow said.

"I can get us the materials for the patch," she argued. "A sheet of plywood, a hammer, and some nails."

"No, Emma," David insisted. "I'm not going to have you passing out or worse over this."

Emma heaved a frustrated sigh. "Guys, look, I get that you're trying to protect me but we have to think about all of us. We're going to be dealing with hypothermia-level cold in a couple of hours if we don't get _something_ on that window. You _have_ to let me try."

"She has a point," Killian said after a short beat. He turned, looking Snow and David in the eye. "I don't like it any more than you do, but we have to at least let her try. If we don't get something on that window, we'll all be in a situation that's a bit beyond a bout of lightheadedness."

Her parents exchanged a pained glance. Emma could see the conflict swimming in their eyes, their fierce desire to keep her safe fighting with their just as fierce desire to keep everyone warm.

Finally, David gave a curt nod. "All right."

Snow shut her eyes, her shoulders slumping in resignation. Emma, on the other hand, smiled in relief.

Her relief was short-lived, however, because apparently her father wasn't done. "There are ground rules, though. You get to _try_. If you can't do it, you don't push yourself and the second you feel at all like you're losing control, you stop. Do you understand?"

Emma nodded. "Got it."

Everyone took a couple steps back, moving away from each other slightly while creating a semicircle in front of the fireplace. Emma shut her eyes and concentrated, focusing her magic. She pushed past the exhaustion she still felt from her earlier magical attempt and just focused on the tendrils of warmth in her stomach.

She called to it, that warmth, that protection, thinking back to her first lesson with Gold. He'd told her to tap into the love within her, to tap into her desire to protect her family. He'd told her to think about those who needed protection.

She thought now of her mother and father and pirate. She thought of Henry and her baby brother. She needed to protect them, needed to find a way to keep them warm.

The sensation of the burgeoning magic stayed in her stomach. It didn't spread, didn't fill her the way it had before. Despite her father's instructions, she pushed further, willing it to spread, willing it to save them. _We need this_, she thought. _We all need this_.

It was _hard_, so hard, and she was _so_ tired but she pushed and she concentrated and she focused …

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, half-slumped against Killian and half-cradled in his arms. "Get her some water!" a panicked voice cried.

The cooler opened and then slammed shut.

"That's it, we're done with this," another voice said. It sounded angry.

"Can you hear me, love?" was spoken right into her ear.

"Can't do it ..." she mumbled somewhat incoherently by way of a response. "Too tired … my fault …"

"No, honey, it's not your fault." That voice sounded like her mother's. "You did do it. You did it, sweetheart."

Two pet names in three sentences. Definitely her mother.

"Here, Emma, drink this. Slow sips." One of the plastic cups from their picnic supplies touched her lips and she sipped the water greedily. When she stopped drinking, panting raggedly, the cup disappeared. "Are you all right? Can you open your eyes?"

It hadn't even registered with her that they were closed. She forced them open and dazedly pulled out of Killian's arms, sitting up straight.

"Whoa, easy." David, she realized now. He was the one who gave her the water, the one who'd sounded angry earlier. "Take it slow, Emma."

"I'm okay," she said, which was a complete and total lie. She actually felt like she'd been run over by a truck. A few times.

She glanced around the room, trying to get her bearings. Henry had somehow miraculously stayed – or been told to stay, most likely – on the couch cuddling Neal, his eyes wide and frantic. Hook was next to her, concern and panic still written across his face. Snow and David sat in front of her, Snow wringing her hands in an effort not to smother her with overprotective hovering and David looking her up and down as if trying to determine whether or not he could believe her.

And there, lying on the floor next to David, was a half-inch-thick sheet of plywood. No hammer and no nails, but she had indeed managed to poof the important part of the patch into existence.

Holy. Crap. "I did do it."

She didn't realize she'd actually said that out loud until David said, "Yes you did and we're very grateful for that but I thought I laid out ground rules for you, young lady."

His tone, equal parts serious and teasing, made a tiny smirk pull at her lips. It was clear in his eyes, the pride at what she'd done mixed with the anger that she'd put herself in danger to do it. She could almost hear what had to be running through his head: _Thank the gods you're all right but don't you _ever_ do that again_.

The best way to stay out of trouble, then, was to play back with him. Despite the fact that she still felt absolutely terrible, she allowed her smirk to show in earnest. "You did. I ignored them."

With that one little joke, the tension in the room broke. Henry let out a breath of relief while Killian visibly relaxed, running his hand through her hair. David shook his head at his stubborn baby girl while hiding a smile, and Snow clasped her daughter's still shaky hands in her own before turning a relieved smile on her husband. "Now who does she sound like?"

"You?" David asked teasingly.

Snow smirked at him. "I meant you."

Emma smiled to herself. Like parents, like daughter, apparently. She sounded like the both of them.


	6. Chapter 6

For the second time in under an hour, Snow asked Emma if she thought she could stand. For the second time in under an hour, Emma answered in the affirmative, and for the second time in under an hour, she pulled her hands from Snow's and tried to stand on her own.

This time, though, she probably should have let Snow help her. Halfway up, a searing headache exploded behind Emma's eyes. She sat back down hard, Killian's arms immediately wrapping around her to steady her as her own hands flew to the sides of her head.

"Emma!" her parents cried in unison.

Their voices tore through her pounding head. The ambient light in the shack was only making things worse. She squeezed her eyes closed in an effort to block out the light. "Charming, please go get the medicine out of the diaper bag," Snow instructed.

"What medicine?"

"Just check the diaper bag. You'll find it." Gentle hands came to rest on Emma's shoulders, holding her up. "Hook, will you please get her some more water?"

"Aye, milady."

Killian's comforting grip disappeared, his fingers lingering on her arm for the briefest of moments, his way of telling her he'd be right back. Across the room, Neal began to wail, most probably in response to Henry's skyrocketing anxiety level. Emma tried to tell everyone to shut up – not that poor little Neal could help it – but the only thing that escaped her lips was a whimper.

"I know, Emma," Snow said, lowering her voice to a barely audible murmur. "I'm sorry."

"Too … loud …" Emma finally managed to pant.

"I know, baby." Snow clasped her hands over Emma's and tried to gently pry them away from her face. Emma fought against it for reasons she couldn't comprehend. Holding her head hadn't eased the stabbing pain in the slightest but she didn't know what else to do and didn't want to let go. "Shh, let me help, sweetheart."

Help? Nothing could help this. This was, no lie, the worst headache Emma had ever had in her life, and that was including the jump from the damn beanstalk.

Nothing could stop a determined mother from helping her suffering child, though, and Snow somehow managed to push Emma's hands away from her temples. She placed her index fingers there instead, applying gentle pressure. Almost immediately, the pain eased from vomit-inducing to merely blinding. Emma let out a relieved moan.

Then Snow massaged Emma's temples, rubbing her index fingers in a circular motion while still applying that gentle pressure. The pain eased from blinding to simply pounding.

Emma felt herself relaxing in response. Snow must have noticed it, too, because she softly murmured, "Is that better?"

"Yeah." She chanced opening her eyes a slit. The light from the fire still bothered her but not as much as earlier. Every little sound still sent a stab of pain tearing through her head but at least she could see.

David and Killian returned then. Her father pressed two brown tablets into her palm – leave it to Snow to have packed some Advil before they left, just in case – while Killian handed her another plastic cup half-filled with water.

"Please tell me this is the same cup from before," she said to him.

The three of them shared a smirk. There Emma was, in the midst of a stabbing migraine, and her only concern was the conservation of their supplies. "It's the same one," Killian confirmed, making sure to keep his voice soft.

Satisfied, Emma tried to pull out of Snow's grip so she could take her medicine. "Uh uh, you're not going to want to do that," Snow warned. "If I let go, that pain's going to come right back."

Well, this was awkward. Since Emma had no desire to deal with that pain ever again, she washed the pills down with a gulp of water while her mother continued to massage her temples.

For a long moment, everyone sat in silence. Henry had managed to quiet Neal so the only sounds in the shack were the crackling of the fire and wind whistling outside. The soft, tender motion on Emma's temples was soothing and comforting. Despite the pain still radiating through her head, her eyes were closing of their own accord before she knew it.

She must have been dozing because David's quiet voice startled her. "We need to move her."

"I can still hear you, you know," Emma mumbled back, lifting her head and forcing her eyes open. She sent her father as sharp as glare as she could muster.

Which, to be fair, probably wasn't all that sharp, considering she was squinting against the light.

Her parents and Killian exchanged a glance that was equal parts sheepishness and mirth. "Sorry, kiddo," David said.

"He's right, though, Emma," Snow quickly added. "You need to lie down."

Emma shook her head in protest, which was one of the worst ideas she'd ever had. Stabbing pain forced her eyes shut again as her hand shot to her forehead in a meager attempt to soothe it. She groaned, which was apparently the last straw for Snow. "Charming, Hook, help her stand up."

She wanted to argue. She was an adult, for crying out loud, and she was more than capable of standing up herself. The only problem was she couldn't seem to force those words out, either. David gently gripped one of her arms while Killian grasped the other. "On three, love," Killian murmured.

He and David counted to three and slowly helped her to her feet while Snow continued to massage her temples. As soon as she was standing, Killian's hand disappeared. Slight panic that she didn't really understand forced her to open her eyes and find his.

And when he caught her eye, he seemed to understand the silent question she'd hadn't even been sure of herself. He smiled comfortingly at her while nodding towards the sheet of plywood she'd managed to conjure before … well, _this_ had happened.

Emma finally understood what he meant to do. While her parents took care of her, he was going to take care of the window. She sent him a grateful smile, and after another gentle touch of her shoulder, he picked up the plywood and headed for the little bathroom.

"I'm going to let go now, Emma," Snow warned her softly. "Just until we get you lying down, all right?"

She almost nodded but caught herself in time. "Yeah," she said instead. "I'm ready."

Emma was mistaken; she was nowhere near ready. As soon as Snow's fingers left her temples, Emma's headache exploded again. She whimpered as she squeezed her eyes shut, hands shooting to her forehead. Soft hands guided hers to her temples, and Emma immediately understood what Snow wanted her to do. Mimicking her mother's motion, Emma pressed her fingers into her own temples to keep the pain under control until Snow could take back over.

Which was honestly something she should have figured out herself and probably would have were her brain not trying to dig its way out of her skull.

She was panting heavily by the time her mother and father walked her over to the bed. She sat hard on the edge and gentle hands guided her towards the pillows. As soon as her head hit the pillow, the headache eased at least somewhat, and a moment later, Snow resumed the gentle massage.

"How'd you learn how to do this?" Emma asked drowsily, forcing her eyes open.

Snow had settled next to her, and David had eased down on the edge of the mattress by her knees. The adult within her was more than a little embarrassed that her parents were flanking her like this, but the lost little girl within her was jumping for joy at _finally_ having this at all and wanted nothing more than to bask in it.

The conflict was far too much for her aching head so the little girl ended up getting her way. Without even realizing she was doing it, she shifted closer to Snow, cuddling up to her mom like the lost little girl within her had longed to do her entire life.

"I learned this from Regina, believe it or not," Snow told her softly. "She used to do this for me whenever I had a headache, and I started doing it for her when she had one. She used to get terrible headaches when she was first leaning how to use magic. At the time, I didn't know why she would get them, of course, but this was the only way I could ease the pain for her until she could sleep it off."

"She used to do it for me, too," Henry added, his voice just as soft as Snow's. He'd apparently been unable to hold in his concern any longer because he'd crossed the room with a squirming Neal in his arms and approached the bed. When Emma gave him as big of a welcoming smile as she could muster, he sat down at the foot of the bed. David reached over and took Neal from him, hoping to calm the baby completely. "I'd get headaches after reading a lot and she'd rub my head like that until I fell asleep."

"That was really nice of her," Emma murmured, her eyes fluttering closed. Sleeping it off sounded wonderful, but she couldn't, not quite yet. She forced her eyes open again and turned to her mother, something she'd said finally clicking. "You think this is magic-related?"

"I'd put money on it," Snow replied. "The good thing is if it is, the headaches should go away once you get a better handle on your magic."

So she could expect more of these, then? Fantastic. "Did Regina's go away?"

"I believe so, after a time. All I remember is that her need for this treatment became less and less frequent until finally she didn't need it at all."

"Mmm."

"This is why I didn't want you overdoing it," Snow whispered, injecting her voice with a hint of teasing.

Despite her throbbing head, Emma smirked. "Duly noted."

David had finally managed to soothe Neal, so he felt comfortable shifting a little closer to his ailing baby girl. Henry curled up with his head on Emma's legs and Snow continued to massage her stubborn daughter's temples. And lying here, with her family surrounding her, Emma had never felt more loved or more safe.

A moment later, Killian emerged from the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him. A smile curled on his lips when he spotted the family cuddled up together on the bed. He approached them with good news, though he, too, kept his voice soft out of deference to Emma's headache. "The window's patched."

"How'd you secure it?" Emma asked. She hadn't managed to conjure a hammer or nails and suffice it to say, she was in no shape to do so now.

"I lined the sill with objects from around the shack to use as weights. Unless a really strong gust of wind comes along, that wood isn't going anywhere."

"Smart idea."

"I didn't sail the open seas for a couple of centuries without learning how to patch holes, love."

She smiled at the teasing tone of his voice. The news of the patched window was apparently what she'd been waiting for because this time when her eyes drifted closed, she didn't fight it.

The Advil had finally begun to kick in, which meant the headache finally starting to ease, _really_ ease. Henry pushed himself up off her legs, kissed her cheek, and whispered, "I love you, Mom. Feel better." When she sleepily returned the sentiment, he climbed off the bed to let her fall asleep in peace.

Killian ran a gentle thumb along her forehead and murmured, "Sleep, love." Then he, too, stepped away; Emma could hear him starting a conversation with Henry as they crossed the room.

Snow and David remained, taking advantage of this quiet little moment to take care of their daughter. Just as she was drifting off, she felt her mother stop the massage. Acting on an instinct Emma couldn't comprehend, she grasped Snow's hand. "Don't go."

The words were a surprise to even her half-asleep brain. Emma the little girl was still in control, apparently.

Her parents both gasped softly. Clearly she'd surprised them, too. "We're not going anywhere, sweetheart," Snow assured her.

David added, "We're going to stay right here until you fall asleep, all right?"

"'Mm-hmm."

True to her word, they both stayed. David sat on the edge of the bed by his daughter's knees, and Snow kept her baby girl's hand within her grasp. Emma allowed herself to relax, basking in the comfort of her mother's thumb running back and forth over the back of her hand and the ease of her father's closeness, until sleep claimed her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** Oh, Charming Family, I wish the show did more with you. *heart* I was in a feels kind of mood, apparently, because this totally just happened on its own.

* * *

It took less than five minutes for Emma's breathing to deepen and her grip around Snow's hand to go slack. A relieved half-smile pulled at Snow's lips as she stopped running her thumb over the back of her daughter's hand. She did not, however, let go. "She's out," she murmured to her husband.

Charming let out a soft breath of relief, happy that his daughter had managed to fall asleep despite her pounding headache. He sat for a long moment with his gaze locked on his baby girl's now peaceful face before glancing down at his son, still cradled in his arms. Then he looked up at his wife with an amused smile. "He is, too."

And sure enough, Neal, too, had fallen fast asleep.

The two of them simply sat and watched over their sleeping babies. These were the moments Snow lived for. These peaceful little moments made her forget all the pain and all the missed time, little moments when she could pretend she'd always been Emma's mom and Charming had always been Emma's dad. Little moments when all the awkwardness and anguish melted away and everything fell into place and they all simply … fit.

For these brief little moments in time, everything felt _right_.

"Is it odd that I could watch them sleep all day?" Charming asked softly, a hint of amusement in his tone.

"Not at all," Snow assured him as she brushed a wayward strand of hair out of Emma's eyes with her free hand. "I could, too."

They were both content to let the moment linger just a touch longer but Neal began to shift uncomfortably in his father's arms. "All right, little prince, I get the hint," Charming murmured, pushing himself to his feet. He rounded the foot of the bed and stepped up beside to Snow so she could give their tiny son a sweet dreams kiss.

And of course she did so, pressing a soft kiss to his little forehead and running a finger down his soft little cheek. "Have a good nap, my little prince," she whispered. Then she watched as Charming crossed the room, swaddled their son, and nestled him in the car seat for his nap, murmuring soft comforts to him all the while.

Snow smiled. In the absence of the bassinet, the car seat was the next best thing.

While he was on that side of the shack, Charming stooped down to pick up the picnic blanket from where it lay in front of the couch. Then, with the car seat hooked on one arm and the blanket draped over the other, he made his way back to his wife and ailing daughter.

Without a word, he set the car seat down on the mattress by Snow's feet and then proceeded to tuck in his sick baby girl. A smirk curled on Snow's lips at the thought of the conniption fit Emma would throw if she ever woke to find her father tucking her in like a five-year-old. She didn't stop him, though. What Emma didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Charming lovingly draped the blanket over Emma, folding it down around her shoulders. Then, not wanting to disturb her but still wanting to give her comfort, he pressed the barest whisper of a kiss to her forehead. "Feel better, kiddo," he whispered.

It was only then that Snow released Emma's hand and gently tucked her arm under the blanket. "Sleep tight, baby," she murmured as she kissed her daughter's forehead as well.

This was normally the point when parents would leave their napping children in peace, but neither Snow nor Charming could seem to force themselves to leave. In fact, Charming reclaimed his seat on the edge of the bed by Emma's knees.

In the back of Snow's mind was a niggling little voice reminding her that she'd never had the chance to care for Emma like this. She'd never had the chance to soothe any of Emma's fevers or comfort her when she was sick or just sit with her while she slept off an illness. Now that the opportunity had presented itself, Snow was certainly going to take full advantage of it.

Not to mention that she and Charming had lost their baby girl _twice _now. The return of their memories of the year they spent without her had brought back all the indescribable pain and grief they'd felt at losing her for the second time. And now that they had her back, the two of them wanted nothing more than to hold her close and never let her go.

Snow could see it in Charming's eyes, too, every time he looked at Emma. The pain and injustice over having missed yet another year of their child's life mixed with the sheer gratitude and relief that she'd once again found their way back to them. Frankly, it was a wonder the two of them had been able to let her out of their sight long enough for her to disappear into a time portal with Hook in the first place!

_No_, Snow thought, running a thumb along Emma's forehead and smiling when Emma relaxed further at her touch, _neither one of us can leave her. Not now, not after what we've been through_.

A glance across the room proved that Hook had engaged a still concerned Henry in some kind of game involving dice. Snow sent a grateful smile the pirate's way when he caught her eye, and he smiled back back, telling her he would keep Henry occupied while they took care of Emma.

"How long do you think she'll be out?" Charming murmured to her, startling her out of her reverie.

"Not very long," she replied, giving a slight shrug. "If her headache is indeed magically-induced, she'll probably only be asleep for an hour or so. That's about how long Regina always needed."

"And when she wakes up, the headache will be gone?"

"The worst of it will be, yes. It'll probably linger a bit as a dull ache but it won't be the stabbing pain she felt before."

Charming nodded, his eyes locked on Emma. "I hate this, Snow," he admitted after a beat. "I hate that her magic does this to her."

And oh gods how Snow knew how he felt. "I hate that her magic does this to her, too, Charming, but she can also do some amazing and wonderful things with it. Even though I hate that it led to this, she was right earlier. We need to keep each other as safe as possible until we get out of here, and we would have been in real trouble if she hadn't been able to conjure that plywood. Once she gets a handle on her magic, she'll be able to avoid … this." She waved her hand in Emma's direction, indicating her physical condition.

"I know," Charming assured his wife. "I'm well aware that she saved all our lives by pushing herself to get us that plywood, and I'll never be able to thank her enough for it. I just wish it hadn't been at the expense of her own well-being."

"I do, too, but she's _our_ daughter," Snow replied, smiling sardonically at her husband. "Saving others at the expense of her own well-being is kind of hardwired into her DNA."

Charming grinned at her somewhat sheepishly. "That's very true."

They let the conversation trail off, once again content to sit with their napping children. A deep shudder ran down Snow's spine after a moment, causing her to start and Charming to look over at her sharply. "Are you all right?" he asked her, sudden concern flashing into his eyes.

"Yes, just had a chill," she replied somewhat warily. The sudden chill did not bode well. She could feel it in the air, a coldness that, despite their efforts at warding it off, was seemingly seeping in through the very walls. Sheer maternal instinct forced her to lean forward and adjust the blankets around both Neal and Emma.

The sun had disappeared behind some clouds, and Snow was all of a sudden very concerned about the coming dusk. "Charming, I'm getting worried. It's only going to get colder as the sun goes down, and I'm not sure the fire will be able to throw enough warmth to combat it."

"I am, too," he admitted.

Snow nodded solemnly, trying to figure out a game plan. Neal had his blanket and she'd packed extra onesies in the diaper bag; they could double-up on his clothes if they had to. They had the picnic blanket, which was big enough to cover three adults lying side-by-side – or Henry and two other adults. She was ninety-five percent sure there was a blanket in the back of her station wagon; she usually kept one back there for emergencies. That, however, was a less than ideal option. After all, if they could easily get to her station wagon, they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.

She hadn't seen any blankets or quilts around the shack; the bed didn't even have any linens. Between that and the lack of running water, Snow was convinced that whoever owned this shack hadn't opened it back up for the season yet.

Which, of course, really put a crimp in their trapped-inside-this-damn-shack readiness.

The adults would have to sleep in shifts, with one or two of them watching over the others for signs of hypothermia.

When she voiced the plan to Charming, he nodded. "One thing we don't do, though, is tell her," he said, nodding in Emma's direction. "Not until she's rested a bit. She'll be wanting to magic us some blankets next, and I don't want her getting even more sick over this."

"Agreed."

Not that either of them believed they could stop Emma if she got it into her head that they needed blankets. It was just better that they wait until she'd built her strength back up before she attempted anything of the sort again.

A soft cheer erupted from the other side of the room. Snow and Charming looked over to find Henry beaming at Hook. Snow had no idea what had happened, but Henry was clearly thrilled about whatever it was and Hook was just as clearly having fun with the boy.

All afternoon long, Hook had been doing a wonderful job not only keeping Henry occupied but also helping with and caring for Emma. And all of them, really. He'd gone out with Charming to search for a patch for the window without a second thought, he'd patched the window as best he could, he'd been right there whenever any of them had needed him.

"He's been wonderful today," Snow murmured, nodding in Hook's direction, her surprise evident in her voice. "With all of us, but especially with Emma."

Charming followed her gaze to the pirate and smiled softly. "He has, hasn't he? Love can do some amazing things."

That got Snow's attention. She turned her head, looking sharply at her husband. "Do you know something I don't?"

"Not officially," Charming said, "and I highly doubt you don't know it. He loves our daughter, Snow."

Charming was right; she had known. Or at least she'd suspected. It was clear in the way Hook looked at Emma, like she was the only person in the world. It was clear in the way he looked out for her. He'd found her in New York, he'd helped her and kept her safe through their time travel adventure. He protected her, he fought for her. He'd been right there beside her through her magic-induced illness today.

He'd helped her family more times than Snow was able to count.

And Snow could also see it in the way Emma looked at him. The way she got lost in his eyes, the way she moved into his space. It was the same way Snow acted around Charming.

"As long as she's happy," Snow murmured, smiling at her husband. "That's all that matters." Charming smiled back at her. The smile transformed into a sardonic grin when she added, "And of course it goes without saying that in the rare event he does end up breaking her heart, hers will be the last one he ever breaks."

"Agreed," Charming replied with a chuckle.

Emma stirred in her sleep then, her nose scrunching and brow furrowing. Snow and Charming froze, afraid their conversation had disturbed her, only to release simultaneous breaths of amused relief when she simply turned onto her side facing Snow, unconsciously draped her arm across her mother's knees as she stretched out, and settled back into sleep.

Snow couldn't stop herself from once again lightly taking her baby girl's hand. Emma tightened her fingers around Snow's for a brief moment, unconsciously acknowledging the comfort. Tears brimmed in Snow's eyes, tears for the time she'd missed with her daughter and tears for the lonely, loveless life Emma had lived prior to her arrival in Storybrooke.

"Despite all her outward toughness," she whispered to her husband, "there's a lonely little girl somewhere inside her who simply wants to be loved. She just didn't know how to allow it. She's been so hurt, Charming. So hurt, so disappointed, so unloved … she's been afraid to let herself believe we were different."

Charming was blinking back sudden tears now, too. "She told you things. During the curse, I mean."

"Not much, but yes. Part of me wishes she hadn't, because knowing what she endured here… it's almost too much to bear. But a larger part of me is grateful that she'd trusted me with even that much, and all of me just wants to hold her until the rest of her walls come down." She looked deep into her husband's eyes, wanting him to be aware of how serious she was. "She's made the first step, Charming. She's let us in. The rest is up to us."

"Well, if the rest is protecting her with everything I have and loving her with all my heart and soul, I'm fully on board," Charming told her, just as seriously. "This is how we show her, Snow. Sitting here, being there for her, being a constant presence for her … this is how we let her know we're different. Yes, she'll probably be embarrassed when she wakes to find us still sitting here with her, but that little girl inside her who'd never had anyone sit with her while she was sick? She'll have had her dreams come true."

"This is how we help her heal," Snow murmured.

"Exactly. Love is strength, remember? You told me that our baby girl taught you that."

"Yes," Snow said, smiling down at her sleeping daughter. "She certainly did."


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** I feel like I haven't said it in a while: you guys rock. :)

* * *

The first thing Emma became aware of was that she was cold. Not just a little chilly, either, but accidentally-left-the-AC-on-high _cold_. Groaning softly, she pulled the blanket covering her tighter around her shoulders and drew her knees to her chest. The cold abated at least somewhat, which allowed the exhaustion still weighing down her body to start pulling her back under again.

"Is she all right?" a soft voice asked, drawing Emma back from the brink of sleep.

"Yes," another voice whispered in return. "She's just stirring."

Then she felt a light tug on the blanket. Someone was adjusting the thing so that it covered her lower body completely. A startled Emma's eyes snapped open and she came face-to-face with her equally startled mother. "What're you doing?" Emma asked, though it came out as a groggy mumble rather than the indignant huff it had been in her head.

"I'm sorry," Snow replied, cringing slightly. "You're shivering; I was trying to help."

She _was_ shivering. A glance under the blanket revealed that goosebumps had broken out on her arms. She tried to sit up only to have Snow do her fluttering-overprotective-mom thing and place her hands on her daughter's shoulders, lightly holding her down. "Take it slow, Emma. How are you feeling?"

How was she feeling? She was tired and confused and cold. How the hell else was she supposed to be feeling?

And then she remembered _why_ she was so tired: pushing herself to poof the plywood into existence, the dizziness, the godawful headache.

Speaking of which, the migraine had blissfully faded while she slept. A dull ache still remained in her right temple but it was much more bearable than the stabbing, blinding pain from before.

Compared to how she was feeling before her nap, Emma felt like a million bucks. "I'm okay," she replied, though she was still somewhat out of it. "Better than before, at any rate."

Snow let out a breath of relief as she removed her hands from Emma's shoulders. Just when Emma thought she was free from Snow's Overprotective Mom mode, Snow placed her hand on the small of her back, helping her sit up. The blanket fell, pooling around Emma's waist and causing another shudder to creep down her spine.

Before she had the chance to gather the blanket and drape it around her shoulders, David did it for her. Only then did she realize that he was still there, too, sitting in the same spot as when she fell asleep, on the edge of the bed by her legs.

Next to her on the other side lay her baby brother in his car seat, bundled up and napping as well. Neal hadn't been asleep when she lay down. He'd been nestled in their father's arms, calm and gurgling contendedly. The car seat had been all the way across the room. That meant …

She looked up at her parents, light dawning and a familiar conflict brewing within her. "Did you two stay here the whole time I was asleep?"

"Yes," her parents answered in unison.

Inside her, the war between an independent adult and a lost little girl raged. The adult thought it was kind of ridiculous that the two of them had sat there with her for … however the hell long she was out but the little girl who'd longed for the attention and comfort was leaping for joy. The adult was embarrassed – especially now that she vaguely recalled asking them to stay – while the little girl had no desire to let the affection go.

Emma had had every intention of letting the adult remain in control and telling her parents that sitting with her the entire time hadn't been at all necessary, but what came out of her mouth surprised all three of them. "Why?"

She blinked. Why had she asked that? Both the adult and the little girl understood: they'd stayed because she'd asked them to stay.

Pain flashed into both Snow's and David's eyes, pain and longing and anguish. Emma immediately wished she could take back the question.

But then Emma recognized that the pain in their eyes didn't come from her question. No, it came from the reason she'd had to ask her question in the first place. Her question had come from a place of not understanding why anyone would want to sit with her while she was sick … because no one ever had. Snow took her hands, and David rested a hand on her knee. "Because we love you," he said.

Such a simple statement but so complex a notion. They _hadn't_ stayed, as she'd thought, because she'd asked. Not completely, anyway. That was part of it, but as much as they'd stayed for her, they'd also stayed for them. They'd stayed because they'd already missed so much time with her and they didn't want to miss any more. They'd stayed because she was their daughter and they'd stayed because they _loved_ her.

And damn it all if that didn't send tears to Emma's eyes. "Thanks," she said, trying to keep the emotional tremor out of her voice. "For sitting with me, I mean."

"You're very welcome, sweetheart," Snow replied.

The next sentence slipped from Emma's mouth before she had a chance to stop it. "And for the rest of it, too."

_Thank you for taking care of me_, she meant.

_Thank you for loving me_, she meant.

Tears welled in both her parents' eyes. They briefly exchanged a glance, and in a move that couldn't have been more synchronized if they'd planned it, they both leaned forward and wrapped her in a hug. Her mom's arms wrapped around her, nose nestling in her baby girl's hair. Her dad's palm braced the back of her head, holding her close.

Conflict raged inside her once again. The independent adult long to fight against their grip but the little girl had waited twenty-nine long years for this. She'd waited twenty-nine long years for her mom and dad to hold her, for her mom and dad to _love_ her.

Before Emma knew it, she was holding them back, one arm wrapping around Snow while the other gripped David. With an ease that could only from the now joyous, no-longer-lost little girl, she nestled her chin on David's shoulder.

She heard both of them inhale softly, their surprise evident. As one, their grips around her tightened. "Oh, my princess," Snow murmured into her ear, making the tears in Emma's eyes spill over.

She knew now what she'd been unable to see before her trip through time: Storybrooke was her forever home. _Her parents_ were her forever home, and the little girl, who'd given up hope of ever finding her forever home, couldn't have been more thrilled.

And, if she was being honest, neither could the independent adult.

For a long moment, Emma let her parents hold her. She stayed in their arms until, finally, the independent adult managed to wrest control back from the little girl. She pulled out of the hug, smiling somewhat sheepishly at her parents.

They smiled back and, thankfully, knew not to push it any further. After another squeeze of her hand from Snow and a drying of her tears with the side of his thumb from David, they got up off the bed. David helped Emma stand while Snow lifted a stirring Neal up out of the car seat before he could begin to fuss.

It was only after getting out from under the blanket that Emma understood why she'd been so cold earlier. The air temperature in the shack had dropped considerably in the time she'd been asleep. "How long was I out?" she asked, her eyes darting to the window.

She'd been asleep long enough for the sun to start setting, at any rate. The sky outside was colored with deep oranges and pinks and purples as the sun edged toward the horizon.

"Just under an hour," Snow told her.

Emma winced. A lot had changed in just under an hour.

She glanced across the room, searching for her pirate and her kid. They'd both abandoned whatever activity they'd decided to occupy themselves with while she napped and were huddled in front of the fireplace. Poor Henry looked as cold as she felt.

Sighing, she gathered the blanket from the bed, crossed the room, and handed it to Henry. "Here, kid."

"Thanks, Mom," he said as he gratefully wrapped the heavy blanket around his shoulders. "Are you feeling better?"

"I am, thanks."

"Good." He smiled at her, then looked over at Killian. "Do you want to share the blanket?"

"No, lad," Killian chuckled. "I'm all right, thank you." Then, after meeting first Emma's eyes and then her parents' over her shoulder, he murmured something to Henry that Emma couldn't hear and stood to join her and her parents across the room.

Now – hopefully out of Henry's earshot – the four of them could convene what felt like their hundredth processing summit of the day.

Emma heaved a sigh, looking at all three of them in the dying afternoon light. "This isn't working."

Snow and David shared a glance, one of those looks in which a hundred sentences' worth of communication were exchanged without either of them uttering a word. "It's fine," Snow said after a moment, forcing a smile for her daughter's benefit. "We just need to stoke the fire a bit."

Emma frowned at her mother. The fire was as stoked as it was going to get. "You are aware that your voice gets a little tight when you're trying to sugarcoat something, right? I'm not a little kid. I _know_ this isn't working."

Again, her parents exchanged a glance, though they included Killian in this one. Emma's frown deepened. Now her pirate was able to think-talk with her parents? She didn't think she liked that. At all.

Eventually, David sighed, his eyes closing against the inevitable. Killian swallowed hard and looked Emma in the eye. "The temperature outside is dropping faster than the fire can keep up with, love."

"A shack like this wasn't made to guard against the elements for an extended period of time," Snow tried to explain. "It's shelter and it's certainly better than nothing but … it's not insulated."

Emma's own eyes closed, just like her father's had moments ago. Of course the shack wasn't insulated. Of course. Because what else could freakin' go wrong today? No insulation meant that not only was there nothing from stopping the frigid air outside from leaking in, there was also nothing to stop the small amount of heat they were able to generate from escaping into the frozen night.

"So what do we do?" she asked, opening her eyes. "Try to find somewhere else to hunker down for the night?"

"No," David insisted. "We don't know where the next closest shelter is, and it's only going to get colder as the sun goes down. The last thing we all need is to get trapped outside. We may not be as warm as we'd like here but like Snow said, it's shelter and it's better than nothing."

Emma sighed. He had a point. "Do you know if we're any closer to getting out of here? I know the access roads in the woods aren't usually plowed but short of the foot and a half of snow out there melting enough for us to drive over it, that's the only way we're leaving."

"Grumpy and Red are working on it but as you can imagine, the town's a mess right now. They've got the Dwarfs plowing out countless people who are stuck in places with no heat whatsoever."

She nodded, her shoulders slumping. Damn, this whole thing was a freakin' _nightmare_.

"There's an extra blanket in your car, Gramma," Henry spoke up from across the room. Emma cringed; how much had he heard? Hopefully not much. She'd been trying to keep him from finding out how serious their situation was. "I saw it when I got the cooler out. There are other things, too. Bottles of water and extra sweatshirts in case we go to a restaurant or store or something that's cold."

Snow smiled, her eyes widening in realization. "He's right! I knew I had the blanket but I'd forgotten about the spare sweaters! There should also be some snacks in the tote on the floor of the back seat. It's my emergency stash."

Despite the entire situation, a smirk tugged at Emma's lips. Only Snow would have an emergency snack stash in the car. Then again, in Emma's fake memories of when Henry was little, she'd always kept a couple of snacks in the Bug, just in case he started complaining of hunger while they were driving.

Maybe it was a mom thing.

Still, the supplies in the car didn't exactly help them in the shack. "If we could get to the car, we wouldn't need to stay here," she reminded them.

"One of us could go to the vessel, gather the supplies, and bring them back here," Killian spoke up, his voice soft. He again looked her in the eye, and all of a sudden, Emma's heart dropped into her stomach.

He wanted to go. He wanted to traipse over a half mile through eighteen inches of dense, heavy snow to get the stuff from the car and bring it back.

"No!" she cried. "There's a foot and a half of snow on the ground and it's freezing out! You'll have frostbite before you even get there, never mind having to turn around and come back with everything."

"I could go with him–" David offered.

"You're not dressed for it, mate," Killian interrupted, indicating David's jeans and plaid button-down.

"And you are?" Emma retorted.

"The leather will keep me warmer than his denim will keep him."

Emma shook her head. "No one needs to leave. I can get the stuff without going anywhere. I know where it is; it won't be as hard as creating something out of nothing–"

All three of them interrupted her with a forceful, "No." Emma blinked in surprise.

"You're not up for it, love," Killian said gently. "You're exhausted. One can tell that just by looking at you. You need to build your energy reserve back up before you try anything else. We're not having you pass out again or suffer from another migraine – or worse – if there's no need for it."

"And I'm not letting you go out there if there's no need for it. I can–"

"No, Swan, you can't. Not after exerting yourself so much already."

She set her shoulders, glaring at her pirate. "Well, if I can't magic the stuff here, then I'm going with you."

Again, all three of them protested. "You're not up for a half-mile walk through a foot and a half of snow, either, Emma," Snow said gently.

Just as Emma opened her mouth to insist that she was going with Killian, come hell or high water, the pirate himself said, "Despite our better judgment, we let you try earlier, and you were right. What you wanted to do worked. Now you need to let us try what we want to do and have the faith in us that this will work, too. I'm most warmly dressed of all of us. You have to let me go."

Emma tore her eyes from Killian's and looked over at her parents instead. Certainty was written across their features, certainty that this would work, certainty that Killian would succeed. She shut her eyes, her shoulders once again slumping in defeat. His heavy leathers would keep him warm enough on the trek, she supposed, but the thought of him going out into the tundra all by himself …

She opened her eyes when he rested his good hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "I'll be fine, love," he murmured into her ear, out of earshot of her parents. "I promise I will come back to you."

In his eyes she saw nothing but sincerity. Nothing but honesty. Nothing but certainty. He would fight like hell to get back to her. Hell, he already had. He'd _crossed realms_ to get back to her. Surely he could handle a half-mile round trip in the snow.

Though her apprehension was still making her heart pound in her chest, she nodded. "Okay." However, she wasn't done. Just like her father had done for her, she was only allowing this on her terms.

Hopefully Killian would prove to be a better listener than she was herself.

She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket before turning to Henry. "Kid, where's your phone?"

Henry threw the blanket off his shoulders, picked up his phone, and ran it over to his mother. She took it, found herself in his contacts, and pressed send. As soon as the call connected, she answered it on her phone with a slide of her finger and held the device out to Killian. "I'm allowing this on one condition: we stay in constant communication. You're going to be talking to me from the second you step out that door until the second you come back, do you understand me? Because the instant you stop talking, I am coming out to find you."

"Understood, love," he said solemnly. He slipped the device from her hand and kissed the side of her head, making her eyes close against sudden tears. Then, with a comforting smile, he let her go and headed for the door.

As soon as he stepped away, Snow and David flanked her, Snow's free arm snaking around her shoulders while David ran his hand up and down her back. Maybe it was simply the lost little girl once again asserting herself but Emma was surprised to find herself leaning into her mother's side as she watched her pirate slip out the door of the shack and into the dusky, snow-covered world on the other side.


	9. Chapter 9

For a long couple of minutes, Emma watched through the window, Henry's phone pressed to her ear, as Killian trudged through eighteen inches of snow. It wasn't so bad when she could still see him, though the difficulty he seemed to be having maneuvering through the heavy white groundcover sent her heart into her stomach.

Even though Killian was the one doing all the activity, she had a funny feeling they were _both_ in for a very long half-mile walk.

It was after he disappeared from her view that she started to get antsy. She crossed the room and plopped down on the couch with the phone. Snow had spread out the picnic blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace, and she, David, and Henry had all gathered in front of the fire with Neal. It was done under the guise of giving the baby tummy time but Emma knew they were mostly trying to give her some privacy.

Not that there was a lot of privacy to be had in a tiny little one-room hunting shack but Emma appreciated their effort.

"You're supposed to be talking to me, Hook," she said into the phone when she realized he'd been silent for over a minute.

"I'm back to Hook now?" he asked in a mock wounded tone.

"Got you to answer me, didn't I?"

He chuckled. "Too right, lass. What am I meant to be talking to you about?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. What he talked about wasn't important. She just needed him to keep talking so she knew he was okay. "Anything, I guess."

"I don't ramble well, love."

She rolled her eyes. "You were a pirate for how many centuries, Killian? You can't tell me you don't have entire anthologies full of stories you could tell. Just start talking."

Killian sighed into her ear but somehow she could tell he wasn't really annoyed with her. As a matter of fact, she would bet that an indulgent little smirk was on his face at that very moment. And sure enough, after letting her hang for another moment, he did indeed start talking. "It was the first storm I'd weathered on the sea ..."

Emma noted with relief that he sounded all right. Yeah, he'd only been gone a few minutes but he sounded completely normal. There was no hint in his voice that he was shivering or even cold yet – though he had to be at least a little chilly – and there was no hint of sluggishness or over-exertion.

She idly wondered if he'd spent much time at all traipsing through heavy snow. If he'd truly spent most of his life in Neverland, she didn't see how he could have. The climate of Neverland didn't exactly lend itself to winter weather, at least not from what she could tell from her few days there.

Still, she kept listening for any indication at all in his voice that he wasn't okay. Any little hint that something was wrong. Plus, she was hoping that if she kept his mind on telling her stories, he wouldn't notice the cold too much. He did need to pay attention to it but she didn't want him fixating on it.

In all her mental wandering, she'd lost track of the story his accented voice was still murmuring through the phone. As such, it took a moment for what he'd said to register. "You're making that shit up," she said when it finally clicked. "There is no way in hell it rained six inches in twenty minutes."

Of course, prior to today, she hadn't thought it was possible for eighteen inches of snow to come down in forty-five minutes, either. But still.

"Just wanted to see if you were paying attention, Swan," he chuckled into her ear. Emma rolled her eyes even as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Damn pirate. "Where was I? Oh, yes. Six inches of rain had fallen in twenty minutes, and let me tell you, swabbing a deck with that much water on it is nigh on impossible ..."

She let him tell her the rest of his ridiculous – and ridiculously embellished – story without interruption. She didn't call bullshit on anything, even when he mentioned that one of the crew had swiftly constructed a toy boat to sail across the deck. It took pretty much all her willpower, but she did it. When he finally finished, she sighed and asked, "Was any of that story true?"

"The bare bones of it, perhaps," he admitted.

"So, what, the only real part of it was that you'd once weathered a storm on the sea?"

"Aye." She could hear the smirk in his tone, that ridiculously smug smirk of his that managed to both raise her hackles and make her smile in equal measure. Once again: damn pirate.

"Oh, bloody hell," he mumbled so softly he probably hadn't meant to be heard.

Panic rose in her throat. "What? What is it?"

"I've arrived at your mother's land vessel, Swan, but attempting to find an access point ... is not going to be easy."

_Aw, shit,_ she thought.

Bloody hell indeed. How in the hell was he going brush eighteen inches of heavy snow off the car without so much as a crappy snow brush? Snow like this needed to be _shoveled _off the car, for crying out loud, and he had nothing to use but his arms.

She had just started to tell him that the rear would probably be the easiest place to get in when she thought of a better way. A glance over at her parents proved that although they were trying to pretend they weren't listening, they were keep at least half an ear on her side of the conversation. Not in a nosy, eavesdropping kind of way, she didn't think; they just wanted to make sure Killian was okay – and, by extension, that Emma herself was okay.

Of course, when they saw her looking, they both looked caught from a moment. David quickly shifted his gaze back down to Neal but Snow furrowed her eyebrows slightly, silently asking Emma if everything was all right. She nodded – because, in the grand scheme of things, it was. Snow smiled and shifted her attention to Neal as well.

Which was really just as well. If either one of them figured out what she was about to do, they'd kill her. She was already going to be hearing it from Killian when he came back; she didn't need it from them, too. Getting Killian into the car and out again as quickly as possible was paramount, though, so they were all just going to have to deal with it.

"Hold on a second," she murmured into the phone, then shut her eyes and went for it. Once the magic was burbling in her stomach, she envisioned her mother's car parked along the shoulder of the little access road they'd taken into the woods. It was harder than with the tree branch because she couldn't actually see her mom's car but she imagined that the snow surrounding and on top of it made it look like a big white car-shaped lump along the side of the road.

Once that picture was in her head, she envisioned all the snow falling off of the car and to the ground below, unearthing the vehicle so Killian could get inside quickly and easily. As soon as the inner warmth hit just the right temperature, she said, "Stand back."

"Bloody hell, Swan," he grumbled into her ear.

"I trust you can get in now," she said as she opened her eyes, a smug hint to her voice.

"Yes, I can, and you are brilliant, but I thought we discussed this."

"We discussed me not poofing the stuff from the car here. We never said anything about me not being able to magically clear off the car for you. I have no desire to go out looking for a pirate-turned-snowman, thank you very much."

"That was unnecessary, but thank you. Do you feel all right?"

A wave of tiredness had descended on her, reminding her that her parents and Killian were probably right about her not having the energy to poof the stuff from the car, but she saw no reason to tell him that. She could handle some tiredness. "I feel fine."

"Hmm." Okay, so apparently he didn't quite believe her. He really could read her like a book, couldn't he? Still, he didn't press her on it. She heard a creak as he pulled one of the car doors open. "I have to set the talking device down to gather the supplies," he told her instead.

Sometimes his lack of use of the names of the most simple things amused the hell out of her. "It's called a phone, and make it quick," she said, allowing a smirk but only because he couldn't see her.

"Aye, love."

She heard a rustle on the line as he set the phone aside. Holding her phone away from her mouth, she said to her family, "He found the car."

"Thank goodness," Snow said, letting out a breath of relief.

David smiled at Emma, and Henry hollered, "Awesome job, Killian!"

"Thank you, lad!" Killian hollered back, making Emma choke back a snicker. Apparently he didn't quite understand that although he'd heard Henry, Henry wouldn't be able to hear him.

"He says thanks," Emma murmured to Henry, who grinned.

For a long moment, she listened. The panic that had been rumbling in the pit of her stomach since Killian had walked out the door grew as the silence stretched out. Oh, why had she let everyone talk her into letting him go alone? Someone should have been with him … safety in numbers, and all that.

Just as she was getting ready to say something into the phone to capture his attention, he came back onto the line. "I've gathered the blanket, four heavy shirts, and your mother's bag of snacks. I just need to lock up the vessel and I'll be headed back."

She could heard it in his voice now, the cold and the exhaustion. _Damn_ it. He'd been fine while he was walking but the inactivity of standing at the car to find all the stuff must have made the cold catch up with him. Wincing, Emma pulled the phone away from her face to check the time.

Almost thirty minutes. He'd been gone almost thirty minutes, which meant he was at least another thirty or minutes from getting back to the warmth of the shack. Damn it, damn it. She pressed the phone back to her ear just in time to faintly hear the car door close. "Tell me another story, Killian. A real one this time."

"That story was real," he protested.

"Yeah, like ten percent of it. I want a one-hundred-percent real story."

He sighed, most probably due to his weariness. A moment later, though, he found the joking tone he'd been using with her since he left. "All right, if you want a real story … how about the first time Liam left me at the helm all night by myself? I ended up sailing us two days off course."

Emma snickered, as much in relief as actual amusement. "Big bad Captain Hook sailed off course?"

"I wasn't 'big bad Captain Hook' yet, love," he explained, making a smile pull at her lips. Of course he would clarify just how young and inexperienced he'd been at the time. "I was little more than a cabin boy but as the captain's brother, I was allowed certain opportunities."

Yep, just as she thought.

He wove the story in that lovely, accented voice of his. Liam had let him take over while he went to bed for the night. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, Killian lost his heading and, in trying to regain it, miscalculated their positioning in relation to the stars. By the time Liam returned to the helm at first light, Killian had sailed over thirty miles in the wrong direction. "Add in the storm we sailed into trying to regain our previous heading and it took us close to two days to get back on course," he chuckled. "Liam said he would never understand how I'd managed to run us thirty-six hours off course in just seven."

Emma smiled. "I take it he wasn't mad."

"Not at all. He'd known it was a possibility when he left me at the helm. We never told the crew, though. Some of them wouldn't have been nearly as understanding. I believe the explanation they all heard was that I'd been trying to outrun the same storm only to have it change course and double-back on us."

His voice was even more weary now. Another quick glance at her phone revealed that they still had another fifteen more minutes, give or take. Damn, damn, damn.

When the silence on the other end stretched out, Emma said, "Tell me another one, Killian. You probably won't get another chance to tell me all these stories at once, so you should take advantage of it while you can."

Much to her relief, Killian chuckled at that. "How about the time we managed to capture three treasures at once?"

"This is another one of your embellishments, isn't it?"

"Does it matter?"

Not in the slightest. The story itself didn't matter at all, just as long as it kept him talking. "Carry on," Emma said, making him chuckle.

And so she allowed his weary voice to fill her mind with images of pirate captains and treasure chests and tall-masted ships. She didn't believe a single damn word of it, but she didn't care.

"Swan?" he asked.

The utter exhaustion in his voice shattered the mental image he'd created for her. Panic once again leaped into her throat. "Yeah?"

"Can you open the door? I'm bloody _freezing_."

Oh, God, was he hallucinating? Were hallucinations even a sign of hypothermia? She was just about to ask him what door he needed her to open when it registered. In two seconds flat, she leaped off the couch and dashed over to the door of the shack. She pushed it open and there stood her exhausted, shivering pirate with a tote of Snow's, which must have been in the car, stuffed to the gills with the food, clothes, and blanket hooked over his shoulder.

"I told you I'd come back to you, didn't I, Swan?" he said, smirking smugly as he stepped over the threshold and handed her the phone.

Emma heaved a mildly exasperated sigh as she pulled the door closed. How she could want to hug him and smack him at the same time, she would never understand.


	10. Chapter 10

Everyone in the little shack had witnessed Snow's overprotective streak when Emma was the one who'd needed to be taken care of, but no one had expected her overprotective fluttering to extend to her daughter's pirate as well. No sooner had Emma pulled the door closed than Snow had leaped into action, handing Neal off to David and telling everyone to get off the picnic blanket. As soon as everyone was off, she picked it up and shook it out to give to Killian.

"Thank you, milady," he said, still shivering as he held his hand out for the blanket.

Snow completely ignored his outstretched hand. Much to Killian's utter confusion and Emma's eternal amusement, Snow wrapped the blanket around his shoulders herself while slipping the tote from his grip and hooking it over her own shoulder. In the blink of an eye, she'd fashioned him a kind of vague cloak, with one corner of the blanket up over his like a hood. "Hold it here," she said, indicating where she'd pulled the two sides together around him.

He obeyed her instruction, too perplexed and too cold to argue with her.

All right, maybe Emma could forgive David and Killian for snickering when Snow was babying her, because watching her mother fuss over a full-grown adult – who was centuries older than she was, even! – was pretty damn funny.

"Sit in front of the fire, Hook," Snow instructed, as if a centuries-old cunning pirate captain wouldn't have thought to do so himself. "We'll have you warmed back up in no time."

Killian allowed himself to be led to the fire, finally managing to swallow his confusion enough to arch a questioning eyebrow over his shoulder at Emma as he and Snow passed her. She just shrugged in response, trying – and not exactly succeeding – to hide a smile. He playfully narrowed his eyes at her but she remained unmoved; after all, payback was a bitch.

It struck her only when Killian faced forward again that she'd just had a silent conversation with him, the same kind of silent conversation her parents had all the damn time. Holy crap, that was _weird_. And kind of awesome, but yeah, weird.

Snow got her charge settled on the floor in front of the fire, the blanket wrapped around him as tightly as he could stand. "I wish I had something hot to give you to eat or drink," she said apologetically as she crouched down next to him.

"It's quite all right," he assured her. "The blanket and the fire are more than enough. I spent years at sea with nothing to warm me but the clothing on my back."

She gave him a little smile before standing up straight. Then she crossed over to the sofa, unpacked the tote piece by piece, and set everything out flat on the cushions. Emma watched her for a beat before asking, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Trying to warm the things up," Snow replied. "Putting on a sweater that's freezing cold from being outside for hours isn't going to help."

Emma had to admit, her mother had a fair point.

For a long beat, everything was quiet. Then the squirt started to fuss, spurring David into motion. He paced the length of the shack with him but when he didn't calm, Snow held out her hands. "Let me. He's probably hungry."

David wasted no time in passing the baby over to his wife. The mention of the H-word must have given Henry courage because he spoke up somewhat hesitantly, "I'm actually hungry, too."

Come to think of it, so was Emma. The unseasonal snow outside was really messing her with head; if it were truly winter, it would have been dark for a couple of hours by now. Instead, the sun was low in sky, seemingly fighting against the pull toward the horizon. As such, it hadn't registered with her that it was way past dinnertime.

Henry was beyond hungry, then. A mildly hungry twelve-year-old boy could utterly decimate what remained of their food stores, to say nothing of what a twelve-year-old boy whose dinner was overdue by an hour could do. Emma shot an almost helpless glance at David, silently asking him how to handle this. She didn't want to worry Henry by telling him they had to ration what was left but she didn't want him taking however much he wanted, either.

David nodded at her, just as silently telling her he'd handle it, but before he could even open his mouth, Henry said, "I know we're trying to conserve our food, guys, so don't worry. I only want like, half a sandwich. Just something to take the edge off."

Emma gaped at him. He knew? How'd he know? She'd been so careful!

A smirk curled on her kid's lips, a smirk not unlike the one Killian usually gave her. "I'm twelve, Mom."

It was a cheeky preteen's version of "I'm not a little kid anymore, you know," which, hadn't she said pretty much exactly that to her own mother just a little bit ago? Now she knew how Snow had felt, trying to protect her from realizing the full danger of their situation just that much longer. And she also knew how Henry felt, indignant at being babied yet still vaguely amused and even touched.

She sighed, giving her kid a gentle smile. "Yeah, go for it," she said, nodding toward the cooler.

He smiled back then dashed over to the cooler with all the enthusiasm of a very hungry twelve-year-old boy. While David helped him ration his dinner, Emma crossed the room and plopped down on the floor next to Killian. The poor pirate was still shivering despite the combined heat of the blanket and the fire. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better. I'm warming up."

It certainly didn't look like he was. She shifted the blanket, pulling it tighter around his shoulders. Her hand brushed his as he readjusted his grip on the fabric. Holy shit, his skin felt like _ice_. "You're an idiot, you know that?" she asked.

"It's been said," he replied, arching an eyebrow at her. His voice was noncommittal.

But she wasn't done. "You spent an hour out in that snow, Killian. Sixty minutes!"

"I spent an hour out in the snow to gather supplies that will keep us all warm during the night, love," he reminded her softly. "It's a fair trade."

"You're still shivering! I think that says otherwise."

"You passed out and suffered a horrible migraine headache because you used your magic to conjure what we needed to keep us all warm. That didn't look like a fair trade for you from my shoes, either, Swan, but it was, wasn't it?"

What the hell could she say to that? As far as Emma was concerned, it _was_ a fair trade. The migraine was terrible and awful, of course, and she hoped she would never have to live through one again and the lightheadedness – or, okay, tiny loss of consciousness … whatever – was embarrassing, but if it meant keeping her family from freezing to death in this little shack, she'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The silence stretched out. Killian must have figured he'd won because a smirk curled on his lips. Emma huffed. Who the hell did the pirate think he was, bringing logic into this?

Regardless of whether or not his trudge through eighteen inches of snow was a fair trade, he wasn't going to get warmer any faster with just the fire and the blanket. Knowing she needed to make this quick before he figured out what she was doing, Emma closed her eyes and concentrated.

She was getting better at calling her magic. It seemed to be responding more quickly, at any rate. In a fraction of the time it had taken her to conjure the non-baby-vomit-covered sweater, she poofed a steaming mug of hot chocolate – with the requisite whipped cream and cinnamon, of course – into existence.

A stab of pain tore through Emma's head the second the mug appeared. Her hand shot to her forehead as she winced. Apparently she hadn't quite recovered enough from her earlier attempts at magic. Either that or she was once again trying to do too much too fast. Whichever.

The headache faded after a moment, for which she was immensely grateful. "Drink that," she said, bringing her hand down from her forehead. "It'll warm you up faster than just sitting here."

Killian shifted his surprised gaze from the mug to Emma. The surprise fled his features and concern took up residence there instead when he got a good look at her. Damn it, she must have looked as tired as she felt. "Love–"

"I don't want to hear it," she said, holding up a hand to stop his impending argument in its tracks. "A little headache and tiredness for me is nothing compared to hypothermia for you. You need the cocoa."

And then, before he had a chance to argue any further, she pushed herself up from the floor, comfortingly touching his shoulder as she did so, and crossed the room to her parents.

"How's he doing?" David asked, nodding towards Killian. In the time she'd been with her half-frozen pirate, Snow had nursed baby Neal, who was now settled contentedly in David's arms.

"Still shivering," Emma replied, giving the little squirt a smile as she held a finger out to him to grasp, "but between the fire and the hot chocolate, he should be fine."

"What hot chocolate?" Snow asked.

Um, oops? "The one I conjured for him?" Emma said, cringing slightly.

"Emma!" Snow cried.

"It's just one little mug of cocoa!" she hissed, trying to keep Killian from overhearing. "He needs it!"

Snow shook her head. "Honestly, Emma, what are we going to do with you?" Then, before Emma had a chance to react, she stepped forward and placed the back of her hand against her daughter's forehead.

A horrified Emma ducked out of her reach. "I don't have a fever! I didn't have one before, did I?"

"That's aside from the point."

Emma rolled her eyes. It was most definitely more amusing when her mom went all overprotective mom on someone else. Snow going all overprotective mom on her was freakin' mortifying.

(And touching … definitely touching. But mostly mortifying.)

"What are we going to do about sleeping arrangements?" Emma asked, more to change the subject than out of any real curiosity.

David smirked at her. "Well, we've got the bed, the couch, and two blankets. Neal obviously has his car seat, so he's set. Two of us can take the bed, and two of us can take the couch if we sleep foot-to-foot."

"That still leaves one odd person out," Emma sighed.

"The couch is a pullout," Henry spoke up around a mouthful of turkey sandwich.

All three adults stared at him, dumbfounded. "How do you know that?" Emma asked.

"I checked," he shrugged, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Yeah, Emma had figured he'd checked. Her question was more about why he'd thought to check in the first place.

"So three of us can fit on the couch under one blanket," he continued, "two of us can take the other blanket and sleep on the bed, and Neal gets his blanket and the car seat. It's perfect!"

All right, that actually was pretty perfect, though David did not seem at all enthused at the idea of Emma and Killian possibly sharing a bed. His eyes had darted to Killian and he was staring daggers at the back of the poor guy's head, making Emma simultaneously roll her eyes and wonder what had happened to David's "you're finding your moments" stance. It wasn't like the two of them could – or even would! – do anything with everyone else right freakin' there, anyway.

When Emma caught Snow's gaze, she quirked an eyebrow at her. Snow just shrugged, indulgently rolling her eyes at her husband's overprotective-dad mode.

"We'll discuss who's sleeping where when it's time for bed," he spoke up after a moment. Despite Emma's annoyance, she swallowed a smirk. He was stalling for time; even though Emma was a grown woman with a child of her own, David was now going to spend the next couple of hours trying to figure out a way to keep his baby girl away from the pirate.

That was apparently enough discussion for Henry, who nodded and joined Killian at the fire, offering him the other half of the turkey sandwich.

"Someone should probably stay on watch, anyway," David continued, lowering his voice so Henry couldn't hear. "If this is an attack, we don't want to make it easy for them. Plus, depending on how far the temperature drops, one of us should keep an eye on the others while we sleep."

"There should be two of us on watch in that case," Snow suggested. "That way if it does get dangerously cold, the two people who are awake can keep an eye on each other, too."

"Agreed," Emma said.

Snow smiled at her. "We can work out the details later."

Emma nodded, her eyes traveling to the window. The sun was just along the horizon now. In a few minutes, it would sink out of sight, taking with it both its light and its warmth. Pretty soon, the only source of both light and heat would be the fire burning brightly in the fireplace.

She sighed. It was shaping up to be a _very_ long night.


	11. Chapter 11

It only took twenty minutes for the sun to sink below the horizon. Ten minutes after that, it was so dark that seated on the sofa, Emma couldn't see the bed on the other side of the shack. The only light in the room came from the dancing flames in the fireplace, flickering orange light that didn't quite have the power to chase away all the shadows.

"Wow," she muttered after her eyes had adjusted to the dim light. "I never realized how much I took electricity for granted."

Electric light _and_ electric heat. She shuddered despite the warmth from the fire and the blanket covering her legs. She'd spent plenty of nights without electricity in recent weeks, but the urgency of her times in the Enchanted Forest and Neverland had kept her from truly noticing the lack of modern conveniences. Now, though, an entire dark and cold night stretched out ahead of her and there was nothing she could do but wait it out.

Emma _hated_ waiting things out.

Snow smiled as she eased down on the sofa with her daughter. Her smiled widened when Emma held up the blanket so her mother could cover her legs as well. "Not having electricity isn't a big deal," she said, her voice soft. Neal, cradled in her arms, was fighting sleep and she dared not disturb him lest they all have a screaming baby on their hands.

"Yeah, for you," Emma easily returned. "You're all used to this."

"I'm not!" Henry spoke up from his spot front of the fire with Killian and David.

"I didn't mean you, kid. I meant everyone else. What the hell did you three do at night with no lights or TV or radio or _anything_?"

"There are sources of light other than light bulbs, you know," Snow replied with mock offense at Emma's implication that a world without electricity was primitive. "Light is light whether it comes from a table lamp, a lantern, or a candelabra. As for the rest of it, we found ways to occupy ourselves. Telling stories, playing games, or even just reading by lantern light. It was never boring."

Maybe, but they hadn't known any different.

"I used to study the stars at night," Killian spoke up. He'd finally warmed up enough to turn his back to the fire, facing Emma and Snow on the couch. He let the blanket drop from around his shoulders and smiled when Henry grabbed a corner of it to drape over his own legs.

"Well, yeah," Emma said, rolling her eyes, "but you kind of had to, didn't you? You were the navigator."

"Aye, and I learned how to navigate by them, but that's not what I meant. I would watch them. Nights when the seas were calm, I'd go out on deck and do nothing but watch the stars for hours. I found it relaxing."

She arched an eyebrow at him. Sitting on a boat deck and staring up into the sky was relaxing? She'd be bored within ten minutes. "Seriously?"

"Aye. The night sky has the power to soothe unlike any other sight I've seen. The stars dance, they wink and blink, they flicker, and they shoot across the sky. They put on a show, one that's never the same and yet never changes. Night in and night out, the stars appear, no matter what is happening down here. There's a comforting steadfastness to it all."

A gentle smile curled on Emma's lips. Come to think of it, the notion that the stars were always there despite whatever was going on in one's own personal world _was_ comforting. It was a constant, and if there was one thing both she and Killian had had very little of in their lives, it was constants.

He returned the smile.

"What about you, Gramps?" Henry asked. "What did you do in the evenings on the farm?"

"Our evenings were actually quite short because we got up so early in the mornings," David explained.

"At the ass-crack of dawn," Emma teased. Snow winced at her language.

"Hey, now, don't knock sunrise," David teased right back. "Watching the darkness turn to gray light and then to the warm brightness of the early morning was my night sky."

Emma playfully wrinkled her nose. "I much prefer my mornings to start after it's been light for a couple of hours."

"Believe me, we all know," Snow teased.

Everyone snickered while Emma pursed her lips. "Anyway," David said after the snickering died down, returning to Henry's original question, "we didn't have long evenings but my parents still made sure there was time for stories or activities before I went to sleep."

Emma smiled even as the back of her throat began to constrict with emotion. Her parents' evenings had been filled with togetherness despite the lack of modern conveniences. Her evenings, while filled with modern conveniences, had lacked the togetherness. They'd consisted of homework and finding ways to occupy herself until lights out.

In response to her daughter's rising emotion, Snow shifted closer to her, snuggling up as much as she dared. And in what was yet another example of the lost little girl forcing her way to the surface, Emma closed the gap, nestling into her mother's side just as she'd done earlier. She felt more than heard Snow gasp, and before she had the chance to shift away, Snow once again wrapped an arm around her daughter's shoulders while cradling her son in the other.

Not wanting to miss out on a family cuddle, David pushed himself up from the floor and plopped down on Emma's other side. Thankfully, no one called any attention to the fact that her parents were now flanking her. After a moment of silence, Snow began to hum softly, her way of giving the little squirt the final push he needed to sleep.

Snow's humming seemed to fill Emma's ear. It was a lullaby of some sort; she could tell that much. The tune was unfamiliar to her, though. Unfamiliar or not, it was soothing and it, combined with the warmth of her parents surrounding her and the exhaustion still weighing down on her from her magic use, was making her drowsy.

The sounds in the shack combined to form their own lullaby. Snow's quiet humming, the crackling of the fire, the wind whistling outside, the soft conversation that had sprung up around her. It was only when a deep shiver ran down her spine that Emma was startled back to attentiveness. It was getting _cold_, despite the fire and despite the efforts to stay close to share body heat.

David rested a gentle hand on his daughter's shoulder before standing up to feed a couple of logs into the fire. "We need those colored logs Doc Brown had in the third _Back to the Future_ movie," she mumbled.

Henry snickered, partly in amusement but mostly because he was the only one in the shack who'd gotten the joke. Killian frowned at her. "What is this _Back to the Future_ thing you keep talking about, Swan?"

"It's a movie about a kid who has to get back to the future," Henry explained oh so helpfully.

Snow, David, and Emma swallowed snickers while Killian heaved a sigh. He arched a questioning eyebrow at Emma, silently begging her to translate. "Basically, what the kid said," she smiled, too tired to fully explain both what a movie was and the storyline of a 1980s movie trilogy. "I'll show you someday. I think you'll get a kick out of it." Mostly because she and Killian had pretty much just lived the plot of the first one.

David sat back down then, squeezing in closer to his daughter than before. Emma rolled her eyes but she didn't have the heart to tell him to scoot over. He wanted to be close with her, and the lost little girl inside her was once again leaping for joy.

Truthfully, the lost little girl inside her wanted her dad to be close to her just as much as her dad did. And the lost little girl wanted her mom close, too. The fact that between the two of them, her parents were staving off the cold for her was an added bonus.

Emma was drawn from her reverie when Snow stopped humming. She glanced to the side and sure enough, the little squirt was finally sound asleep. Judging by the time, he'd get a good few hours in before he started to fuss. Snow didn't get up to settle him in the car seat, though. Emma suspected she was trying to keep him warm with her body heat as well.

For a few moments, everyone sat in silence. Then Henry spoke up, mostly because the warmth of the fire at his back was beginning to make him drowsy, too. "You know what we should do?"

"What's that?" Snow asked.

"Tell ghost stories."

Emma groaned. "We're not telling ghost stories."

"Aw, come on, Mom! It's a perfect night for one!"

The kid had a point. The wind whistling outside rattled the window panes, and wooden shack creaked and groaned with the force of it. It was indeed a perfect atmosphere for ghost stories, which was the exact reason they weren't going to tell them. "No."

"Please? You tell the best ghost stories. Please?" He drew the word out that time, sticking out his lower lip in a slight pout.

She had every intention of resisting her kid's Puppy Dog Eyes this time but then her pirate had to go and pull the same damn stunt! "Aye, love," he spoke up, coming thisclose to batting his lashes at her. "I would like to hear a ghost story as well."

Emma swallowed a groan and glanced at her parents for backup. Unfortunately for her, they both looked just as intrigued at the prospect of a ghost story as the kid and the pirate. _Damn_ it, she did _not_ have the energy for this tonight.

Just as she was about to tell them all as much, Killian copied Henry, pouting at her with a pleading expression on his face. "I told you stories, Swan," he reminded her.

"You told me stories so I could make sure you weren't freezing to death in the tundra."

"Turnabout is still fair play, lass. You owe me at least one story."

"Ugh, fine!" she cried. Henry and Killian shared a grin. "I'll tell you guys a ghost story. _One_ story, though, and that's it. Got it?" She stared pointedly at her kid for that one.

"Got it," Henry grinned.

Her family and Killian arranged themselves comfortably while waiting for her to begin. Since she lacked the energy to make up a story, she decided to tell an old standby. None of them would know the difference. She waited until everyone stopped fidgeting and then a beat longer to build the anticipation. "Once upon a time, a family named the Freelings–"

"An _original_ story, Mom," Henry interrupted.

_Damn_ it.

Snow gaped at him. "How'd you know that wasn't original? She hadn't even finished the first sentence!"

"The Freelings are the family in _Poltergeist_," he shrugged.

Aw, crap, she'd forgotten she'd let him watch _Poltergeist_ for the first time this past Halloween. "All right, all right, let me think for a second."

She _really_ did not have the energy to think up a ghost story … and then it came to her. She didn't have to make one up at all! "Okay, you want a real ghost story?"

"A _real_ one?" Henry asked, his eyes wide.

"A _real_ one."

The kid nodded vigorously. Snow and Charming looked both confused and intrigued, and a dubious Killian almost imperceptibly raised his eyebrows.

_Oh_, yeah. This was totally the story she was telling.

"The house I was living in when I was nine was really old," she said, leaning back on the sofa to make herself comfortable for story time. "_Really_ old, from the 1850s. It had been a farmhouse that was converted into a group home, and it was one of the nicer ones. We slept two to a room, all except the littlest boy, Jacob. He had a room of his own. Every morning, he would tell us about the woman in his room the night before. Every night, she stood at the window shade. He never could make out any features; she was just a shadow that never moved, a shadow standing at the window and watching him go to sleep. He was only four, so I never really believed him. I just figured there was something outside that was making a shadow on the shade and he just thought it looked like a woman."

"I would have, too," Snow softly interrupted.

Emma smiled at her. "I never really believed him … not until one day a few months later. This girl Alana and I were home sick from school with the flu, so we were alone in the house."

Snow and David exchanged a pained glance at the thought of their nine-year-old baby girl being left alone with only another sick child for caring and company. Wincing slightly, Emma charged on with the story. "I was napping but a voice woke me up. I couldn't make out what the voice was saying; it was almost like trying to listen to a conversation in another room. I thought it was Alana calling me so I got up and went to her room. It couldn't have been her, though, because when I got there, she was sound asleep."

"You could have been dreaming," Killian pointed out. She raised an eyebrow, and he smiled sheepishly when he realized his mistake. "Except you just said the voice had continued after you awoke."

"Yes," she replied dryly, swallowing a chuckle. "Anyway, I couldn't hear the voice anymore but I did hear the back door open and close. I didn't think anything of it, just figured someone had finally come home. I had just stepped back into the hallway to go back to my room when I heard the footsteps. Heavy footsteps going up the stairs … the stairs I was facing. No one was there."

Henry shuddered.

"The footsteps continued past me down the hallway and stopped in Jacob's room. I pretty much freaked out at that point and ran back to Alana's room, woke her up, and hid under the covers with her. When Jacob overheard me and Alana talking about it later, and he said, 'That was Florence.' He said she liked the back yard because that was where her garden used to be. Anyone want to take a guess which yard his room overlooked?"

"The back yard?" Killian asked.

"Yep."

The pirate's expression had shifted from dubious to intrigued while her parents were waiting with bated breath to find out what happened next. Henry was squirming on the floor, which made Emma feel both triumphant and somewhat guilty. "I ended up learning through a local history project for school that there really was a garden in the back yard at one point and that a woman died in the house in 1905. Her name? Was Florence Robinson."

Everyone gaped at her. "You're making that up," Henry said once he'd finally recovered his voice.

"I swear I'm not."

"I don't believe you," he insisted, but the tremor in his voice said otherwise. Emma hid a smirk.

Killian raised a questioning eyebrow at her, and she nodded to let him know that she was indeed telling the truth. If anyone had asked her a couple of years ago if she'd really thought it was a ghost or if the whole thing was just the result of some kids' active and fever-induced imaginations, she would have placed all her bets on imagination. With what she'd seen and done in recent weeks, though, an actual ghost was a more distinct possibility.

The very notion made a shudder run down her spine, a shudder not caused by the air temperature in the shack. At least she got a kickass story out of the deal, judging by the expressions on everyone's faces.

"Did you call Ghostbusters?" Henry asked cheekily after a moment of letting the story settle.

Everyone laughed, even though the Enchanted Forest denizens didn't quite understand the joke. Either way, it released the dramatic tension Emma had built with her story. "No, we didn't," she said, smirking, "and I'm kind of glad about that. The last thing I need is to find out they're real, too."


	12. Chapter 12

Soft conversation swirled around Emma, and for the first time in her life, she allowed herself to bask in it. Her story had kicked off a kind of ghost story contest between Killian and Henry, though they were both very clearly making theirs up. David even got in on the act, weaving a tale of a long ago stay at a supposedly haunted castle, which Snow listened to with a barely suppressed smirk.

"He's completely bullshitting, isn't he?" Emma murmured to her mother after David described a seemingly disembodied despairing wail echoing through the castle's corridors.

Though she again winced at her daughter's way with words, Snow nodded. "Completely."

Emma smiled, leaned her head back against the couch, and shut her eyes, letting her father's words paint the picture in her mind. Snow tightened her grip around her shoulders, absentmindedly running her thumb up and down the side of her arm.

It was such a motherly gesture that Emma had to swallow hard to dislodge the lump that had risen in her throat.

They stayed like that for a while. Emma allowed herself to drift on a sea of words and stories until there was more yawning going on than talking. She opened her eyes just as Henry admitted defeat. "Mom?" he said wearily. "I'm tired."

That seemed to spur everyone into action. Snow squeezed Emma's shoulders and rose from the sofa to get Neal bundled up and settled in his car-seat-turned-cradle for the night. David stood a moment later to feed a couple more logs into the fire to fuel it for the next few hours and stoke it to make sure it was good and strong. Emma immediately registered the loss of warmth now that they'd both left her side. Goosebumps emerged on her arms as she got to her feet, working with Henry to remove the cushions from the couch.

She and the kid had the couch pulled out in less than a minute. Killian stared at the transformed piece of furniture, utterly fascinated. "What?" Emma asked teasingly. "You've never seen a pull-out couch before?"

He shook his head. "I've seen bunks built into walls and bunks that fold down from alcoves but I've never seen a bunk hiding in another piece of furniture like that."

"Whoa, wait a second," Henry said, blinking at the pirate in fascination. "You've seen a fold-down bed? Like in the cartoons?"

Killian frowned at him. "What is this 'cartoon' thing of which you speak, lad?"

Henry started to tell him but it soon became apparent that Killian didn't comprehend how drawings could possibly move without the use of magic. "Never mind," Emma said because she was far too tired to try to deal with the explanations. She'd have to make sure she showed him a cartoon someday soon; maybe when she showed him _Back to the Future_.

A quick rummage in the small closet by the front door turned up a couple of extra pillows for the pull-out. She carried the pillows over to the bed and handed one to Henry. He accepted it with a smile and shrugged on one of the extra sweatshirts that Killian had retrieved from the car.

It was a testament to both how tired and worried Henry was that he actually let Emma tuck him in with the picnic blanket. She'd expected him to shrug off her ministrations because, as a twelve-year-old boy, he sometimes felt like he was too old for being tucked in, especially in front of everyone. "You warm enough, kid?" she asked as she eased down on the side of the mattress.

"Yeah," he nodded. "Are you coming to bed, too?"

"Not just yet," she said softly. She, Killian, and her parents needed to discuss sleeping in shifts but she didn't want to do that while Henry was still awake. Judging by the concerted effort he was making to keep his eyes open, she wouldn't have to wait long. "We just have to make sure everything's locked up tight and then I'll be along, okay?"

"Okay," he said, his eyes sliding closed. "G'night, Mom."

"Good night, kid." He was asleep before she finished kissing his forehead. She smiled, pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders, and stood.

Her parents and Killian had crossed to the other side of the shack to set up the bed. The second she stepped over to them, she shuddered. Holy crap, it was _freezing_ over here!

On a normal night, a fire in the fireplace was probably more than enough to radiate warmth throughout the entire shack. But this was not at all a normal night, and the heat just was not reaching this corner of the room. The broken window in the bathroom probably wasn't helping. It was patched but not sealed, and even though they'd sealed off the door as best they could, Emma could still feel cold air seeping through the cracks and into the shack proper.

Her parents were wary. Killian was, too. She could see it in their eyes, all three of them. And if they were worried, that meant things were _serious_. "Um, guys?" she said, squinting at them in the dim orange light. "I hate to say it, but I think the bed might be off-limits tonight."

"I think you're right," David said, sighing heavily. "Sleeping arrangements just got a whole lot more complicated."

"No, not really," Snow gently argued. "Two people can fit on the couch with Henry. That leaves two of us on watch, which is fine because I think we're at the point now of needing two people awake and keeping an eye on each other."

Everyone agreed. It was too cold; if only one person was awake and began succumbing to hypothermia, they'd all be in a world of trouble.

Emma glanced at Killian, who nodded at her. It wouldn't strike her until much later that she'd once again asked him a silent question and he'd once again just as silently answered her. "Killian and I can take first shift," she said to her parents. "Why don't you two try and get some sleep?"

Snow shook her head. "Emma, you're still exhausted. You were half-asleep when we were sitting together." She shifted focus to Killian. "And you trudged half a mile through eighteen inches of heavy snow earlier. You're just as exhausted as she is. Let us take first shift–"

"The squirt's going to have one or both of you up in a few hours anyway," Emma interrupted. "You should sleep while you can. We'll be fine for a little while."

Snow once again opened her mouth to argue but David grasped her hand, stopping her before she could say another word. "There's no way for us to win this argument, is there?" he asked his daughter, deciding to cut to the chase.

She smiled. "Nope."

He smiled back at her, unable to stop himself from running a gentle thumb along her cheek. Her eyes involuntarily closed against the comfort. That must have given David courage because before she had a chance to pull away, he pressed a soft kiss to the side of her head. "Take care of each other," he whispered.

"We will," she assured him just as softly. She opened her eyes to look into his. "And we'll take care of you guys, too."

"I know you will," he said, a proud smile on his lips.

He ran his thumb over her cheek a second time before turning away. Activity in the shack now turned to getting everyone settled for bed. David grabbed the pillows from the bed for him and Snow before crossing the room and climbing under the covers with Henry. Snow set Neal's car seat beside the couch so she would hear him if he fussed, shrugged on one of the extra sweatshirts, and climbed into bed beside her husband.

Emma made sure the picnic blanket really did cover all of them. Thankfully, it did. It was a tight squeeze with all three of them in the bed, but that was probably a good thing; they could share body heat that way. "Night, guys," she whispered.

"Good night, sweetheart," Snow whispered back.

"Wake us up if you need to," David instructed. "You don't have to wait for Neal to do it if you're having trouble staying awake."

"We will," Killian assured him.

They settled down to attempt to sleep, and Emma and Killian took seats in front of the fireplace to stay warm while on watch.

For a long time, the only sounds in the shack were the crackling of the fire, the wind still whistling outside, and the rhythmic breathing of her parents and kid. Emma could sense more than see Killian shifting closer to her but she didn't understand why until he asked, "Are you all right, love?"

It was then that she realized she was shivering. "Yeah, I'm all right," she said, drawing her knees to her chest. She just needed to warm up a little, was all.

In a split second, his hand was on hers. "No, you're not." He stood and grabbed both one of the extra sweatshirts and the blanket he'd retrieved from the station wagon. "Put this on and wrap up in this," he instructed, indicating first the sweatshirt and then the blanket.

She stared at him, her mind sluggish. Good God, she was _tired_.

"Swan, the cold is getting dangerous. Your hand is like ice. Please just do as I ask."

Something about the tone of his voice broke through her sluggishness. She put on the sweatshirt while Killian did a skin-to-skin temperature check on everyone else. The shirt was David's; it was a couple sizes too big for her and the comforting scent of his aftershave still clung to the cotton. The lost little girl inside of her wanted nothing more than to pull the cuffs over her hands, hold the sleeves up to her nose, and surround herself with the scent that, for some reason unknown to her, made her feel safe and secure.

For once tonight, the little girl did not get what she wanted. Before Emma even had the chance to pull the cuffs over her hands, Killian returned. "Everyone's fine, love. Even your baby brother." He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders as he eased back down next to her. "Is that better?"

"Yeah, thanks." Then her mind focused enough to realize that she was hogging the extra layers. "But what about you?"

"Leather," he reminded her. "I'll be all right for the next little while, at least until you warm back up."

Still, she shifted closer to him, closing the gap between them. They could share body heat, if nothing else.

Now that everything was quiet, the danger of the situation was really beginning to settle. How long would they be stuck out here? How long could they survive in the cold? What if it never warmed up? What if the groundcover froze over and they couldn't get Snow's car back onto the road even if the plow could reach them? What if the temperature dropped even further? They only had so many supplies on them … only so much food and so much warmth.

There was only so much they could do.

"What are you thinking, love?" Killian asked softly.

It was a testament to how tired she still was and how slowly her brain was moving that she actually told him. "Even if we survive the night, Killian, how long can we keep this up?"

He frowned at her, somewhat confused. "As long as we have to."

"But–"

"Swan, I know you're worried. Frankly, I am, too, but we don't have a choice. We survive, any way we can."

She didn't say anything, and the confusion on his face morphed into concern. "What's really going on? I've seen you handle greater obstacles than an uncomfortably cold night in the woods without so much as blinking. You know you can do this. Why the hesitance now?"

Emma tore her eyes from his, unwilling to voice her real concern. Unwilling to admit it, unwilling to speak it aloud lest it come to fruition.

"Emma, don't do this. Don't pull away from me now. Please tell me the truth."

The truth? The truth was her life was following pattern. The truth was the savior was not allowed to be happy.

"Emma, love, please."

He rested his hand on hers, and for some reason, that did it. She whirled on him. "You want to know the truth? It's that this always happens. I get something and then I lose it. It happened all throughout my childhood, it happened with Neal, it's happened I can't even tell you how many times since I came here. Just when I think everything's okay, the other shoe drops. Don't you see? I _finally_ have it, Killian; I have everything I've been searching for my entire life. Home and family and someplace to belong and people I love, and because of one stupid magical snowstorm, I could lose it all. All it would take to wipe us all out right now is for the temperature to drop a few more degrees."

She finally caught herself and shut up. Left unsaid was how utterly _terrifying_ the thought of losing them was. She didn't think she'd survive losing any of of them, she really didn't think she would.

Killian's hand tightened around hers in an effort to calm her. "You won't lose it all, Swan."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because you won't allow it to happen." He smiled somewhat sardonically at her. "You, Emma Swan, are the most stubborn woman I've ever met. You are not going to let one magical snowstorm take your family from you. And I also know that neither of your parents nor your lad nor I will allow one magical snowstorm to take you from us. We're going to make it out of here, love, all of us, because there is no other option." That sardonic smile turned gentle, reassuring, and completely confident. "I've still yet to see you fail."

Tears brimmed in Emma's eyes as she let his words settle. After a beat, she smiled almost sheepishly. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, love."

She held his gaze a moment longer before standing to check on everyone herself. She needed to see with her own eyes that they were okay.

Her parents and son were sound asleep, cuddled up practically on top of each other underneath the blanket. All of them were clearly seeking warmth. None of them were shivering, though, and a soft touch of everyone's foreheads proved that they were warm enough. A little bubble of relief flitted in her stomach as she straightened the blanket around them and then crouched down to check on the squirt. He was squirming a bit under his blanket but a gentle caress of his little forehead calmed him. He stilled with the tiniest of sighs, making a smile curl on Emma's lips.

They were okay. They were all okay.

Relieved, she sat back down next to Killian. "You all right now, love?"

"Yeah." And she knew now that she would be, they _all_ would be.

Sensing that she needed a joke, Killian allowed a lascivious grin to curl on his lips. "You know, Swan, since we are, for all intents and purposes, alone, I can think of a few ways to keep us both warm."

A embarrassed flush colored her cheeks. Her parents were _right there_, for crying out loud! Yeah, they were asleep but that was somehow beside the point. "Yeah, keep dreaming, pirate," she teased.

He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Gladly."

Emma rolled her eyes while hiding a smile. The man was absolutely impossible.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:** I'm sure we all know by now that I apologize for nothing, but still. :) Also, you guys are the best.

* * *

The unmistakable sound of a baby just beginning to fuss drew Snow out of a heavy and warm slumber. _Funny_, she thought as she dragged her eyes open. It was nothing more than a hitch in her son's breathing that had roused her, and it was something that had happened every night without fail from the day he was born. She could be dead asleep but the second her son's breathing changed, she would be wide awake.

And it wasn't just her son. She had been like that as Mary Margaret Blanchard. From the first night she offered Emma a place stay, she'd connected with her new roommate in a way she'd never understood at the time. She'd never understood why she would toss and turn or wake up every twenty or so minutes until she heard Emma come in for the night. She'd never understood how – or why – she always knew when Emma was awake in the wee hours of the morning. A couple of times she'd started awake and just lay in bed for a minute or two trying to figure out what had woken her only to hear her roommate begin fighting against a nightmare of some kind in the loft above. And she'd never understood it, not until a rainbow wave of magical light washed over her and she _remembered_.

Only then had it made perfect sense: mother's instinct.

She'd never told Emma any of it, though, mostly because she was afraid of pushing the parental stuff too hard. Maybe now, though … maybe now she'd be able to let Emma know that on some level that even the darkest of curses couldn't touch, she'd recognized her daughter even then.

A soft moan from beside her drew her out of her reverie. Her husband, too, had heard the hitch in their son's breathing. "That's his needs-a-changing fuss," he murmured to his wife, resting a hand on her shoulder. "I'll get him. You go back to sleep."

But she couldn't. Mother's instinct was pinging again, not for her son this time but for her daughter. Charming climbed out of bed, taking care not to disturb Henry. Immediately registering the loss of warmth from her husband's absence, Snow pushed herself up on her elbows and searched the dimly lit shack for Emma.

She found her stubborn daughter and her daughter's equally stubborn pirate sitting side by side in front of the well-stoked fire, cuddled up together to share body heat and wrapped in the extra blanket Hook had retrieved from the car. Emma had her head resting against Hook's upper arm, Hook had propped his chin up on his palm, his elbow on his knee, and they both looked like they were on the verge of falling asleep right where they sat. "I can't go back to sleep," she murmured to Charming, nodding towards them as she climbed out of bed as well. The chill of the air hit her full force, and she shivered. "We're on duty now."

Even if Emma and Hook weren't about to fall asleep on the spot, she would be forcing them into bed anyway. After sitting for hours in the cold air, they needed some time under to blanket to warm up.

Charming glanced in the direction she'd indicated and smiled. "Got it." Then he picked Neal up out of the car seat and carried him over to the other side of the shack for a changing.

While he was tending to their son, Snow decided to tend to their daughter. "All right, you two," she said softly as she approached the fireplace. She hid a smirk when they both jumped at the sound of her voice, their groggy minds fighting to come back to the present. "It's bedtime for you both."

"We're fine," a very sleepy and decidedly not fine Emma argued. She rubbed her eyes, completely unaware that she looked very much like a small child who'd missed a nap.

"The fact that neither one of you can keep your eyes open and your heads up says otherwise, Emma," Snow gently teased. "To bed with the both of you."

Surprisingly, Emma didn't argue any further. She pushed herself to her feet, grasping Hook's hand on the way up. Though she seemed wholly unaware that she'd done it, Hook was more than aware. His brows shot to the ceiling but he wisely said nothing to call attention to the gesture. He simply allowed her to pull him up and lead him over to the couch-turned-bed, a small smile curling on his lips.

Snow smiled as well. It seemed that the good captain was learning what she herself had learned in the Forest: Emma's affectionate side (and she most definitely had one underneath her tough exterior) had a tendency to show itself when she was half-asleep.

She thought she was going to get away with following them completely undetected due to her daughter's drowsiness but just as Emma grasped the blanket, she turned to Snow as if suddenly realizing she was there. "You're not going to like, tuck us in, are you?"

She sounded vaguely horrified at the thought. "No," Snow assured her even though that had kind of been the plan. "I just want to make sure the blanket covers the three of you all the way."

Emma narrowed her eyes. "That sounds like a fancy way of saying tucking in to me."

"She won't tuck us in, love," Hook assured her softly. Then, over Emma's head, he winked at Snow.

Snow smiled gratefully at him. His encouragement worked; Emma climbed into bed beside Henry, eyes slipping shut the second her head hit the pillow. Hook climbed in beside her and allowed Snow fix the blanket over all three of them.

Once she was sure everyone was covered and warm enough, Snow murmured, "Good night, sweetheart."

"Night, Mom," Emma mumbled, already mostly asleep.

Oh, how Snow would never get tired of hearing her daughter call her Mom. She was more than ready to be Mom and it warmed her heart every time Emma let her know she was ready to let her in. Swallowing hard against the lump that had risen in her throat, Snow addressed the pirate who had done so much for her family. "Good night, Hook."

"Good night, milady," he murmured in return before settling down and closing his eyes himself.

Before Snow walked away, she performed a quick touch test of everyone's foreheads. Convinced that all three of the people in her charge were as warm as they could possibly be, she tiptoed away from the bed and crept over to where her husband was just finishing changing their baby boy. "Is he all right?"

"He's absolutely fine," Charming assured her. "His big sister made sure he stayed perfectly bundled up. He's probably the warmest of any of us."

A smiling Snow glanced over her shoulder at the rest of her family. Said big sister, curled up between her son and her pirate, was somehow already encroaching into both their sectors of the bed. _No doubt about it_, she thought, shaking her head slightly, _my daughter is a bed hog_.

She returned her attention to her son and husband. One glance at her son's bright and not at all sleepy eyes proved that he was going to be up for the next little while. It was just as well that they'd taken over watch, then.

"Come on, little prince," Charming said after he finished swaddling Neal back up in his blanket. "Let's go sit by the fire for a little while. What do you say?"

He must have agreed because he gurgled contentedly.

After a loving smile at each other, Snow and Charming crossed back over to the fireplace and eased down on the floor where Emma and Hook had been sitting. Snow grabbed the blanket they'd used and wrapped it around both her and Charming. It was still warm, which felt absolutely wonderful. "Are you covered enough?" she asked him.

"Yes." He shifted Neal in his arms to make the baby a little more comfortable and smiled when Neal freed one of his little arms from the blanket. Snow reached over and grasped her son's little hand, grinning when his tiny fingers instinctively curled around hers. "If we could just get this little guy to be a little less nocturnal," Charming teased lovingly, "we'd be golden."

"He's sleeping longer at night now so it'll come in time," Snow assured him. She checked Emma's phone, which her daughter had left sitting on the floor, for messages from town. Her eyebrows shot up when she caught the time. "He gave us a good six hours tonight, anyway."

Charming let out a low whistle. He clearly hadn't realized it was so late – or early, depending on how one looked at it. "No wonder Emma and Hook were practically asleep in their seats. I wonder why they didn't wake us like I told them to."

Snow arched an eyebrow at him and smirked. "They are two of the most stubborn people I've ever met. They probably just didn't want to admit defeat."

A smile curled on Charming's lips at that. "True enough."

They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind whistling outside, the popping of the flames behind them, and the occasional gurgle from Neal. Snow was half-convinced that all of her son's little sounds were his pre-verbal way of saying, "Look at me, Mommy and Daddy!"

And they worked, because they smiled down at him with every tiny sound he made.

Then Snow heard another sound from her husband, one that her own body was echoing: the rumbling of his stomach. Neither one of them had eaten since lunch and frankly, she didn't think she could wait the next few hours for breakfast. After resting a hand on Charming's knee to let him know she'd be right back, she stood and crossed over to the cooler. They both needed _something_ to take the edge off their hunger.

From the looks of things, Emma hadn't been able to wait, either. At least Snow hoped it was Emma; there was half a sandwich hanging out in a plastic baggie, at any rate, and Snow knew that Henry and Hook had shared a sandwich before going to bed. Emma hadn't eaten then but hopefully she had while her parents and son were sleeping.

Snow grabbed a sandwich for her and Charming to share and took stock of what remained in the cooler. There wasn't much left, but considering they had only meant it to be a picnic lunch, they'd done well to make it last as long as they had.

She sat back down next to her husband with a sigh and handed him his half of the sandwich. "We have enough food left to get us through breakfast in the morning, but that's it."

Charming nodded. "The last message I got from Leroy was that they'd plowed out the main roads and everyone who was stuck without heat. As the sun went down, though, the roads started to ice over so they had to stop the plowing to start salting. They're going to need to sleep at some point, too, but I'm betting we're out of here by tomorrow." He frowned. "Or today, I suppose. My point was, breakfast may be the only other meal we'll need to eat out here anyway."

A breath of relief escaped Snow's lips. Hopefully they really were only a few hours or so from getting out of here.

She glanced over at the bed, just to do a quick visual check. Everyone was still covered and still snuggled up together to share body heat. She didn't dare think of how badly this night could have turned out if they hadn't found shelter or if they hadn't been as experienced as they were.

Was that the point of this? To try to trap people unaware? If so, it was an awful lot of punch for such small an outcome. From the messages Charming and Emma had been trading back and forth with those in town, it seemed as if everyone was going to make it out of this unscathed. Plenty of people had been inconvenienced, of course, but there were no casualties, no accidents, nothing but a giant mess to clean up. The power apparently hadn't even gone out!

"What the hell is this, Charming?" she asked, mostly because her head was spinning as she tried to figure it out for herself. "Because if this is an attack, where's the attacker? It's been _hours_. It only snowed for forty-five minutes. It snowed a _lot_ in those forty-five minutes, granted, but since then no one's come to lay siege. Is this it or is this just the first wave of it?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Snow," he sighed. "Maybe it's not an attack. Maybe it's ..."

"What, natural? There's no way this is natural."

"Agreed. This is not at all natural. I was going to say maybe it's some kind of accident."

"Accident?"

"A magical accident," he shrugged.

Snow blinked at her husband in confusion. A magical accident made even less sense than an attack. The only practitioner in town who was both powerful enough and unpracticed enough in his or her magic to cause an accident like this was Emma, and she certainly hadn't done it. She hadn't been doing any kind of magic when the storm rolled in. They'd just been sitting together, having a nice time.

Then again, an attack didn't make any sense, either, not with no one coming forward and actually attacking anyone. "Maybe," she allowed, sighing heavily. "I just wish we knew."

"I do, too," Charming said softly. "I do, too."

Snow nodded and let the silence linger a moment before again glancing over at her sleeping family members. Emma had flung an arm out from under the blanket and rested her hand on her stomach, which had in turn uncovered Henry's and Hook's shoulders. Smiling softly, Snow got up, tucked her daughter's arm back under the blanket, and tugged the covering back into place. She thought she saw Emma's eyelids flutter but the flickering firelight made it hard to tell for sure. "I love you," she whispered to her sleeping family members. Then she decided that while she was up, she might as well check their temperatures again.

As her fingers brushed her daughter's forehead, Emma's eyes opened for a brief moment, just long enough for her to smile and mumble, "Love you."

Those words warmed Snow far more than any blanket or cuddling could have. With tears brimming in her eyes, she ran thumb down her baby's cheek. The tears spilled over when her daughter nestled her cheek against her palm. She was asleep now and hadn't really even been awake to begin with but all of that was completely beside the point.

Snow held Emma's cheek for a long moment before slipping her hand free. In the end, she supposed it didn't matter what had caused the storm. The only thing that mattered was seeing her family through the aftermath.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** You guys are seriously so very amazing. Thank you so much for being the wonderful readers you are. I hope you've enjoyed this story!

* * *

Killian woke far sooner than he was physically ready. In an effort to ignore the fact that his mind was rousing even if his body wasn't, he shifted position in bed to make himself more comfortable. His turn was cut short when he rolled right into another warm body, one that didn't budge despite the accidental collision.

He blinked his eyes open to find his beautiful Swan beside him, curled up on her side and taking over half of his pillow. As his sluggish brain became more aware, he realized with a combination of amusement and awe that she'd unconsciously flung her arm across him at some point during the night … er, early morning.

_How in the devil did this happen?_ he wondered even as a smile he couldn't help pulled at his lips.

He heard a soft chuckle from beside him and froze, afraid for the briefest of moments that Emma had awakened. A breath of relief escaped his lips when she remained still, eyes closed and breathing deep and rhythmic. The chuckle, then, must have come from the bed's other occupant.

Killian lifted his head to peek over Emma's shoulder and met the smiling eyes of her young lad. "She's a total bed hog," Henry whispered, a smirk on his lips.

The smile on Killian's face grew wider. His Swan may be a "bed hog," but he would most definitely take it if it meant being this close with her. "So I can expect more of this going forward?" he whispered to Henry.

The lad nodded, his smirk softening into a smile. "She won't believe you if you try to tell her when she wakes up, either. It's fun to tease her about it, though." Then the boy climbed out of bed, apparently giving up hope of going back to sleep himself. He made sure to tuck his side of the blanket tightly around his mother and then tiptoed over to the fireplace to join his grandparents and newborn uncle.

Killian guessed from the dusky light streaming in through the windows that it was still early, so early that he wondered why the lad was even awake. Though his own body was still weary, a couple of centuries of getting up with the sun had left Killian unable to "sleep in," as Emma put it. He was awake now, and no amount of lying still was going to lull him back into slumber.

Still, he didn't get up. During that year without her, Killian had been convinced that he would never see his Swan again … that is, until a bird landed on his ship with a message, a potion vial, and a glimmer of hope attached to its leg. And now not only was Emma Swan here but here she was, _snuggled up_ with him. No, he wasn't moving at all, not until she did.

He could hear the lad and Swan's parents conversing softly in an effort not to disturb her. He could even hear the young royal gurgling happily as his parents doted on him. The simple sounds of a family enjoying an early morning together made him feel … content.

Back when Emma was pleading with him to give her the bean they wanted to use to escape a doomed Storybrooke – which felt like a _lifetime_ ago – she offered him the chance to be a part of something. And she had certainly delivered.

Killian couldn't help glancing over at her again. He very carefully brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She scrunched her nose and brow as his fingers grazed her forehead but she didn't wake.

As far as he could tell, her close proximity to him hadn't raised any eyebrows but his own. Henry hadn't seemed all that surprised by it and he was reasonably sure David at least would have said _something_ if he'd noticed. Then again, her parents couldn't see her arm under the blanket and they'd probably assumed she'd huddled so closely in sleep because she was seeking warmth. Either that or Emma's "bed hog" tendencies were more well-known to her family than they had been to him.

Not that he was complaining in the slightest, of course.

He could have stayed with her for the rest of the morning and, to be perfectly honest, she probably could have slept another couple of hours. That, however, was apparently not meant to be. Her talking device chose that moment to begin making a godsawful racket, one that was loud enough to rouse her from her slumber.

Somehow a grumpy-upon-being-awakened Emma Swan was even more endearing than a cuddling-in-her-sleep Emma Swan. She turned over with a groan, muttering an incoherent string of curses under her breath that made Killian grin in amusement. The turn accomplished two things, which Killian now realized was the reason why she never believed her "bed hog" status: she removed her arm from his chest and returned to him full use of his pillow. She blindly groped for her talking device, just as blindly swiped her finger across the screen, and pressed the device to her ear. "Hello?" she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.

The person she was talking to said something that woke her up immediately. Her eyes flew open as she sat up, the expression on her face one of cautious optimism. "Really? When?"

All activity in the shack stopped as everyone stared at Emma, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. She seemed to be completely oblivious to their attention, as hers was focused solely on her conversation. "You're sure, Ruby?"

The wolf girl must have given her a satisfactory answer because a relieved grin lit her face. "Oh, that's great! Thanks so much. Keep us posted, okay?"

After a little bit more conversation – which, from Emma's side of it, seemed to be the wolf girl making sure everyone was okay – Emma set her talking device down and grinned at the five people staring at her in anticipation. "Leroy took off to plow us out about five minutes ago. He and Ruby figure we're only an hour or so from getting the hell out of here."

A cheer went up around the shack. Snow and David hugged each other and baby Neal while Henry ran at the bed to wrap both Emma and Killian in an excited embrace. Killian was surprised but soon relaxed into the hug.

Finally, they were going home.

* * *

"The polite thing to do," Snow instructed her family after they'd eaten their fill of the food remaining in the cooler, "is to try to leave this place in the condition we found it."

And so the packing began. Well, sort of. Snow and David packed the family's belongings while Henry occupied the squirt. For their part, Emma and Killian put the couch back together, snuffed the fire with the water from the cooler, and put away everything the family had taken out. "I'll call a window place when we get back to town," Emma mumbled, more to herself than to Killian. They didn't break the window themselves, of course, but Emma still felt somewhat responsible.

She paused in her task when she realized that she didn't even know if Storybrooke had a window place to call.

"Do you know how owns this structure?" Killian asked her, drawing her attention from the window repair.

"Not a clue," she admitted. "I didn't even know it was here. I'm hoping I can find out through town records, though." She felt like she should send the owners some kind of gift basket or chocolates or some other little token of appreciation. This shack pretty much saved their lives; she owed them _something_.

And then the answer came to her. "Actually … hold on a second."

Without another word of explanation, she crossed the shack to the bathroom. She took a moment to prepare herself for the inevitable blast of cold air and then slipped through the door. Killian followed her, more out of curiosity than anything. "What are you doing, love?"

"Trying something," was all she said.

She shut her eyes, which must have clued him in to her plans. "Love–"

"Shh."

He placed his hand on her shoulder. "Swan–"

"Shh!" she hissed, not unkindly, as she shrugged his hand off her shoulder. "It'll be fine."

She hoped.

Killian was left with nothing to do but watch her like a hawk. She could practically feel his concerned gaze on her, but she supposed she could allow it. After all, he was one of the two people who'd had to pretty much drag her out of the room when she'd tried this same thing the day before.

She felt her muscles relaxing as the magic began bubbling in her stomach. The warmth grew and somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognized that the little tendrils of power were responding to her call faster than it had even the day before. Maybe she could get the hang of this magic thing after all.

When the warmth was at just the right temperature, she lifted her head. A flash of brilliant white light illuminated the little bathroom, and when it cleared, Emma and Killian exchanged a nervous glance. She was worried that she hadn't accomplished what she wanted and he was looking her over to make sure she was all right.

"Moment of truth," she said hesitantly.

For his part, Killian didn't look at all nervous. Emma just hoped his faith in her and her abilities wasn't misplaced.

She removed the objects he'd set along the sill to hold the plywood in place and then grasped the wood itself. After another moment's hesitation, she removed the wood to find a perfectly repaired window. "Bloody amazing," Killian murmured.

Relief coursed through Emma's veins as she whirled around to face Killian, a proud grin lighting her eyes. And she only got the tiniest of headaches for her effort! "Forget food deliveries. Maybe I need to set up my own repair shop. Emma Swan's Fix-It Services. What do you think?"

Nothing got by a cunning pirate captain, apparently. He smirked as he gently swiped his thumb across her forehead. "Perhaps you should wait until you can fix things without giving yourself a headache before setting up shop, love, hmm?"

She smiled sheepishly. "At least it's nowhere near as bad as yesterday. That shit was _awful_."

"Aye, lass."

After a quick shared smile, the two of them exited the bathroom. Snow and David frowned at the both of them, clearly wondering what the hell the two of them had been doing together. Their frowns only deepened when Emma left the door standing open even though she held the plywood that had been keeping the cold at bay in her hands. She smiled at her very confused parents. "The window's fixed."

For a beat, everyone – minus Killian and the squirt, of course – stared at her in shock. Then Henry finally found his voice. "Fixed? As in … poofed whole again?"

"Yep." Snow and David stared at her in amazement. "Told you I could do it," she continued, her voice teasingly smug.

Killian hid a smirk at that. She may have done it hours later than she really wanted but she did it.

"So you did," David murmured softly, a soft, proud smile on his face.

Snow stepped up to her and brushed a wayward lock of hair out of her eyes, also smiling proudly. "And you only have a tiny headache."

Emma stared at her mother in wonder. How the hell did she know? How did she _always_ know?

Before anyone could say anything else, Emma's phone rang, somewhat startling all of them. She pulled the phone from her pocket and glanced at the caller ID: Ruby. She answered the call and pressed the phone to her ear. "Please tell me you have good news."

"I have the best news," Ruby said. "Leroy's cleared a path to Snow's car. Miraculously, it was already cleared off and now he's working on digging it out enough to maneuver it out of the parking spot."

Relief washed over Emma like a wave. Finally! "Oh, thank God! Thank you so much, Ruby. We're all packed up and heading out now."

"You're very welcome. We'll be glad to have you all back in civilization."

And Emma was more than ready to get back to civilization. "See you in a little bit," she said, then disconnected the call. She turned to her family. "We're plowed out. Now let's get the hell out of here."

The relief in the shack was palpable. Snow took the squirt from Henry so she could bundle him up for the trek to the car. Everyone else gathered their belongings and Emma made sure the fire was indeed snuffed completely.

"You know what I think we should do next?" Henry asked as he hooked one of the totes over his shoulder.

"What's that?" David asked.

"I say we go to Granny's and have the biggest breakfast _ever_. I don't know about you guys but I'm _starving_."

Everyone chuckled. "That works for me, kid," Emma said, because she was pretty damn hungry, too. Half a sandwich for dinner at ten the previous night and some leftover macaroni salad for breakfast at six in the morning just was not cutting it for her. "And I think it goes without saying that we're blasting the heat in the way to car back into town."

"Oh, absolutely," Snow grinned as she buckled Neal into the car seat. "We'll be blasting the heat at the car and at home for the next few days, I think. At least until the chill in our bones wears off."

"Agreed," David smiled.

As soon as everyone had all their belongings in hand, Killian opened the door from the family. "Are we ready?" he asked.

"More than ready," Emma replied.

She watched as her parents and son tromped out into the snow-covered morning. They followed the trail of footsteps through the otherwise unbroken snow Killian had made the day before. David caught his wife's eye, then glanced over his shoulder at Emma. When he looked back at Snow, they both seemed to come to a mutual decision. They hung back a moment until Emma caught up with them. "Uh, hi?" a slightly perplexed Emma asked.

Killian took the silent hint and quickened his pace to catch up with Henry. "How are you doing?" David asked when he was reasonably sure of their privacy.

Okay, where the hell was this going? "Fine," she replied, wrinkling her brow in confusion.

"Good." There was a beat of silence and then Snow said, "You saved us last night, you know. Pushing yourself to patch the window … you saved us."

Emma's breath caught in her throat. She hadn't been expecting that. "We all saved each other," she said after a moment, partly to take the attention off herself but mostly because it was one hundred percent true. "I don't think I would have known what to do beyond 'try not to freeze to death' if we didn't your survival experience to guide us, and we would have been in even more trouble if Killian hadn't gone to get the extra blanket and sweatshirts."

"You're absolutely right," David said after a moment, smiling at her. "Now about you and Hook ..."

Emma groaned inwardly but managed to quirk a teasing eyebrow at her father. "What about us?"

David exchanged a smile with Snow, who nodded. Then he refocused on his daughter, his smile morphing from gently teasing to wise and loving. "Don't be afraid to let him in, Emma. Don't be afraid to let it all in."

"And once you've let it in," Snow continued softly, "nurture it because it'll be the most wonderful thing you've ever experienced." And with that, the two of them stepped forward to catch up with their grandson.

Emma stared after them, not quite sure what the hell had just happened. Killian, either sensing or seeing her confusion, hung back so she could catch up with him. "What was all that about?" he murmured to her.

Emma furrowed her brow. "I think … I think they just gave us their blessing."

At first, Killian looked surprised but then a glint of wisdom lit his eyes. "What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him. "You know something."

He smiled at her. "No, I don't. Not with any certainty, at any rate. I'm just wondering if David's remembered a certain long-ago conversation with a certain prince."

All right, what in the fresh hell? David had mentioned a conversation with a prince the day before. Killian changed the subject before she could ask for a clarification. "What I do know with certainty, however, is that you, Swan, are what your lad termed a 'bed hog.'"

She rolled her eyes. Henry kept teasing her about being a bed hog, and now Killian was starting, too? "Oh, please. I am not."

"You keep telling yourself that, love."

Before she had the time to think better of it, she crouched down, picked up a hunk of snow, and whipped it at her pirate. Most of it happened to catch him right in the face, which she hadn't been intending. "I'm so sorry!" she cried, ducking her head and stifling a giggle. "I didn't mean to–"

She stopped short as a snowball exploded on her jacket. Her pirate, she realized as the shock of the cold faded, and he'd retaliated so swiftly, she hadn't even seen it coming!

Henry grinned when he caught the snowball exchange and decided to get in on the action. From that moment on, it was all-out family snowball war until they got to the car (minus Snow, who was very obviously off-limits due to the newborn baby she was carrying).

The family arrived at the station wagon shivering and giggling, their hands aching from the cold. Leroy was indeed waiting by the car, just starting on the one last wheel left to dig out. "You all sure are chipper for six people who've spent a freezing night trapped out in the middle of nowhere."

They were, weren't they? It had been one long and uncomfortable night, but they'd made it.

_Of course we did_, Emma realized with a smile. There was nothing her family couldn't survive, as long as they did it together.


End file.
